In 2025, the number of American workers represented by a union climbed to 16.5 million, the highest share of unionized workers in 16 years. During an era of declining union membership, this is no small feat. The number of workers who long to be part of a union, however, is far higher—over 50 million.
There’s a reason so many workers are clamoring for union representation. A new report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) argues that tripling union membership could radically change the lives of workers, ushering in the type of wage growth that helped foster a robust middle class in the 1950s.
“Right now, almost every conversation about affordability focuses entirely on prices, as if the only way to make life more affordable is to make things cheaper—but affordability depends on both prices and pay,” EPI president Heidi Shierholz said during a press conference on Wednesday. “There is one institution that has consistently proven capable of raising pay, and that is unions.”
If union membership increased to 30% of the labor force, the median worker could see a 14.5% raise, according to EPI—the equivalent of more than $7,700 each year, or nearly $270,000 over the course of a 35-year career. In total, this boost in unionization would put an additional $1.2 trillion in the pockets of workers annually.
The report notes that this is actually a conservative estimate for wage growth, in part because union density is so low at the moment. EPI’s analysis and previous research finds that as union density rises, wages increase at a higher rate. Unions also tend to increase wages across the board, by implicitly putting pressure on companies that want to retain nonunion workers.
Broader unionization could also correct some of the disparities that have depressed wages. It would help address the racial wage gap, reducing it by over a third and disproportionately raising pay for Black and Hispanic workers. It would also raise pay to match the rise in worker productivity, which has outpaced wage growth for the last four decades.
Perhaps most crucially, data shows that 43% of workers want to unionize, well beyond EPI’s proposed goal of tripling union membership—and public approval for unions is even higher.
“At this moment where trust and support in our institutions is underwater and the country is so polarized, there’s one thing that workers actually agree on,” Liz Shuler, the president of the AFL-CIO, said during the press conference. “And that is that 71% say they support unions.”
Of course, there are plenty of obstacles to boosting union membership, between employer opposition and loopholes in U.S. labor law. As evidenced by the organizing campaigns at large employers that have stalled or failed to yield a contract, it’s not easy for workers to unionize even when there is ample interest. The report cites some of the usual solutions—finally passing the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, for example, which would expand collective bargaining rights.
But EPI also presents some other novel ideas: Since employers don’t always negotiate in good faith, it can take over a year for workers to secure a contract after a successful union election. Proposed legislation would introduce a binding arbitration process to secure a contract, but EPI suggests including a guaranteed cost-of-living raise in the first contract. Another recommendation would force employers with a high CEO-to-worker pay ratio to engage in collective bargaining—giving workers the opportunity to take back some power.
“Before decades of relentless attacks on workers’ rights to unions and collective bargaining, more than one in three workers in this country were union members,” Shierholz said. “So restoring union density to 30% is not a fantasy. At the same time, we are very clear in the paper that there is no silver bullet for getting there. It will require comprehensive labor law reform to truly protect workers’ rights to unions and collective bargaining, given the decades of attacks that we’ve seen on those rights.”
