Black and Hispanic workers especially benefit from public-sector collective bargaining: Differences between local government and private-sector earnings in states with strong, weak, and no collective bargaining rights, by race/ethnicity

Collective bargaining
Race/ethnicity Banned Permitted Required
White -26.5% -19.6% -15.3%
Black -10.7% -2.3% 6.6%
Hispanic -12.3% -2.1% 9.4%
AAPI/other -29.0% -15.4% -9.8%

Notes: AAPI = Asian American/Pacific Islander. Strength of collective bargaining rights is based on rights accorded to miscellaneous local government workers in 2015–2019. Data are from the 50 U.S. states and D.C., with states grouped by the strength of collective bargaining in each state. “Banned” states are those in which miscellaneous local government workers are barred from engaging in collective bargaining. “Permitted” states are those in which local government entities may engage in collective bargaining with miscellaneous government workers but there is no statewide mandate. “Required” states are those in which local government entities are required to engage in collective bargaining with miscellaneous local government workers. Pay gap is the difference in weekly earnings of full-time local government workers ages 18–64 compared with those of their private-sector counterparts, controlling for education, age, hours worked, state, and year using regression analysis.

Source: Authors’ analysis of U.S. Census Bureau Current Population Survey microdata, pooled years 2015–2019; Sanes and Schmitt 2014; Valletta and Freeman 1988; Rueben 1996; Dippel and Sauers 2019; NCTQ 2019; NEA 2020; García and Han 2021; Frandsen and Webb 2017; McNicholas et al. 2020; Brannick 2019; and Commonwealth Foundation 2021.

View the underlying data on epi.org.