Over the last five years, workers have won unions in several high-profile campaigns, including Amazon workers in Staten Island and Starbucks workers in Buffalo. These examples are a testament to workers’ determination and desire for greater agency in their workplace. But these Amazon and Starbucks workers have yet to reach a first contract with their employer, illustrating the issues many workers face when they win a union and begin collectively bargaining. Far too often, employers refuse to bargain in good faith with workers, significantly delaying a first contract. Currently, on average, it takes workers 465 days to bargain a first contract.

Today, the U.S. House of Representatives will likely consider legislation aimed at ensuring workers can reach a first contract without unnecessary delay. The Faster Labor Contracts Act establishes a timeline from bargaining to mediations and, if necessary, binding arbitration. These provisions discourage delay and promote good-faith bargaining, which is exactly how the law should work.

Corporate mergers and acquisitions are an example of how quickly employers can reach a deal when they want to: these complicated, multibillion-dollar deals can often be reached in a matter of weeks. When these corporate deals take longer, it is often due to government regulators challenging the legality of the corporate merger—not corporate conduct.

To demonstrate the difference in corporate conduct in bargaining with workers for a first contract versus corporate mergers and acquisitions, Table 1 shows examples of companies who have engaged in negotiations with workers and corporate mergers. While Starbucks completed a merger in 67 days, they have taken at least 1,643 days (and counting) to bargain a first contract with their unionized workers.

It is clear that corporations can move quickly to reach a deal related to a merger or acquisition but are far too often unwilling to apply that same priority to negotiations with their workforce for a fair first contract.

Table 1

The authors thank the Student Policy Network at the University of Notre Dame for their contribution to this research. 

Introduction

In 2025, unionization in the United States grew to its highest levels since 2009 (McNicholas, Poydock, and Shierholz 2026). This growth is a testament to the fact that Americans increasingly view unions favorably and recognize them as critical instruments for building a just economy. Yet more than 50 million nonunion workers would join a union but are unable to do so because our nation’s labor laws allow employers to derail workers’ unionization efforts (McNicholas et al. 2019).

It is well documented that employers often hire union avoidance consultants to dissuade and weaken workers’ unionization efforts. These consultants work to prevent a union election from taking place—and if that fails, to ensure that workers vote against the union and then stall negotiations over a first collective bargaining agreement. Over the past several decades, large law firms have developed substantial business specializing in union avoidance services. These firms now play a significant role in denying workers their rights to a union and collective bargaining (Kaufman and Stephan 1995).

The role of these law firms in defeating workers’ organizing campaigns and frustrating workers’ attempts to reach a first contract has largely gone unexamined. While employers are required to disclose money spent on lawyers engaged in persuading employees on their union and collective bargaining rights, there is an exemption around reporting money spent on “advice” services, which is ill-defined under the law. Union avoidance law firms have taken full advantage of this reporting loophole and have constructed an industry providing counsel on union busting. Further, many union avoidance law firms provide employers services beyond these persuader activities, including representation at the NLRB and the stalling of first contract negotiations. 

In this report, we examine the union avoidance industry and the law firms that play integral roles in this business. We calculate the revenue law firms generate from employers who try to avoid unions and undermine collective bargaining with their workers. Further, we discuss the impacts of the union avoidance industry on workers’ ability to organize and what it means for workers, our economy, and our democracy.

Employers spend millions on union avoidance consultants

When workers seek to form a union, employers often hire union avoidance consultants to dissuade and weaken workers’ unionization efforts. These consultants include both non-attorney consultants and attorney consultants. Under the Labor–Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA), employers and the consultants they hire must file disclosure reports on agreements in which the consultant is engaging in union-busting activities. Table 1 lists just a few of the employers who filed mandatory reports with the Department of Labor during 2025.

Table 1

These reports represent only a fraction of the total money spent on anti-union campaign services, not to mention legal counsel, representation, and litigation aimed at union avoidance. That’s for two main reasons: 1) consultants are not required to report activity that counts as “advice,” which is ill-defined but currently interpreted to exempt nearly all activities that don’t involve direct contact with workers, even though this accounts for the vast majority of work that consultants engage in; and 2) even activities that clearly must be reported very often are not. Research from LaborLab found that 57% of employers who were known to owe a financial disclosure for having hired a union avoidance consultant in 2024 had failed to file their required disclosure by June 30, 2025, three months after the filing deadline (LaborLab 2025). In 2024, a total of 153 employers filed a financial disclosure, according to the LaborLab report. This showcases a significant amount of underreporting from employers when one considers that over 3,200 union election petitions were filed in 2024, and that 71%–87% of employers hire a union avoidance consultant when faced with a union-organizing drive (NLRB 2026; DOL n.d.). If most “advice” provided by consultants were included, EPI estimates employers spend $442 million per year on both attorney and non-attorney consultants for anti-union campaign services.1

However, that still represents only a fraction of what employers spend on union avoidance. The EPI estimate excludes spending on legal counsel, representation and litigation aimed at defeating organizing drives and stalling contract negotiations, as well as strike preparation and strike-breaking services (McNicholas et al. 2019). It further excludes spending on consultants to implement or enhance employee engagement and “positive employee relations” programs that center around “union-substitution” policies (Levine et al. 2025). These programs feature techniques that are deliberately crafted to preempt, detect, and rapidly quash union organizing, including supervisor training, manipulative communication policies, surveillance techniques, “voice” mechanisms (like suggestion boxes), and employee-involvement programs (such as employee committees and teams).

As mentioned, EPI estimates that employers spend at least an estimated $442 million on anti-union campaign services provided by consultants that are designed to persuade or intimidate workers into voting “no” in union elections. Many of these consultants are also practicing attorneys who simultaneously will provide legal counsel and representation services related to NLRB proceedings. These attorneys also will help employers bend the law to their advantage during contract negotiations, prepare for and break strikes, file unfair labor practice charges to weaken unions and defend employers against such charges, sometimes appealing them not just to the NLRB but also into federal courts. Inclusive of all of these services, the traditional labor relation practices of these law firms generate an estimated $1.48 billion on average.2 When we account for overlap (much labor practice revenue comes from providing anti-union campaign services, not just representation and counsel), these two figures suggest that total spending on attorneys (whether for representation, consulting, or both) and non-attorney consultants is roughly $1.7 billion a year.3 Table 2 shows top law firms’ share of cases at NLRB and the estimated revenue the labor relations practices of these firms generated in 2024.

Table 2

Union avoidance law firms

Prominent law firms—such as Littler Mendelson, Morgan Lewis, and Jackson Lewis—have generated substantial business in union avoidance work on behalf of U.S. employers seeking to frustrate worker organizing and collective bargaining. As shown in Table 2, these law firms do a great deal of business before the National Labor Relations Board, the independent agency charged with enforcing the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). The NLRA is the nation’s fundamental labor law that guarantees most private-sector workers the right to organize and the right to collective bargaining. However, decades of federal policy and court decisions have weakened the NLRA (Shierholz et al. 2024). Union avoidance consultants and law firms have long exploited the law’s significant loopholes, making it harder and harder for workers to win unions. For nearly 80 years, policymakers have failed to address the NLRA’s weaknesses and restore meaningful union and collective bargaining rights to workers.

These law firms have represented employers in fighting against some of the largest organizing efforts over the last decade, including worker organizing drives at Amazon, Starbucks, and Trader Joe’s (Logan 2025). These law firms have essentially created a specialized practice of union busting and together have generated billions of dollars in revenue, as shown in Table 2. The firms range from exclusively labor and employment firms to full-service corporate firms offering representation in a range of matters. The following are profiles of three law firms that have been at the center of the largest union avoidance campaigns in recent years.

Littler Mendelson

One of the largest union avoidance law firms is Littler Mendelson, a global management-side law firm with more than 1,800 attorneys who can make upwards of $1,700 an hour (Littler Mendelson 2026).4 In Littler Mendelson’s 80-year history, it has represented the likes of Amazon, Delta Airlines, and McDonald’s and has played a predominant role in Starbucks’s anti-union campaign (Logan 2022; Logan 2025). Beyond offering their union-busting services to employers, Littler Mendelson has expanded their services to include promoting anti-worker legislation. For example, Littler Mendelson’s Workplace Policy Institute (WPI) played a predominant role in opposing California’s Assembly Bill (AB) 5, legislation aimed at protecting workers by combatting misclassification (Poydock 2020). WPI also supported the passage of Proposition 22, which exempted gig workers from AB5 (McNicholas and Poydock 2019). WPI is part of the Coalition for Workplace Innovation, which has lobbied for proposals that weaken workers’ rights, including the exclusion of gig/app-based workers from employee status (Pinto 2022).

Morgan Lewis

Morgan Lewis also has a large practice aimed at union avoidance (Morgan Lewis 2026). The firm is a global law firm with nearly 2,000 attorneys, representing the likes of Amazon, REI, and McDonald’s. In addition to being one of the largest union avoidance law firms, Morgan Lewis is also known as one of the most expensive firms, with partners making $1,100 to $1,900 an hour.5 Morgan Lewis is the lead law firm engaged in the legal challenge to have the NLRB declared unconstitutional, despite employing multiple former NLRB officials (Rhinehart and McNicholas 2024).

Jackson Lewis

Another law firm with a significant union avoidance practice is Jackson Lewis, a national labor and employment law firm with a nearly 70-year history in union avoidance (Jackson Lewis 2026). The firm has over 1,000 attorneys who can make upwards of $730 per hour.6 Jackson Lewis has an especially robust presence in the higher education and health care industries but also serves major companies in a wide range of other industries, such as ExxonMobil, Amazon, and Google. As with other union avoidance law firms, Jackson Lewis’s services go beyond legal representation—often providing employers a “full-service” campaign in which they train supervisors and design materials, including speeches, to dissuade workers from organizing a union (Correia 2019).

How union avoidance law firms frustrate worker organizing

The NLRB election process is designed to be straightforward. Workers seeking to form a union file an election petition with the NLRB with signatures of at least 30% of the proposed bargaining unit. If parties cannot agree on a bargaining unit and election logistics, the NLRB will hold a hearing on issues of disagreement and then issue a decision and direct that an election be held. Either party can file post-election objections over the conduct of the election and other issues. Once these issues are resolved, if a majority of workers casting valid ballots in the election vote for union representation, the NLRB will certify the union and direct the parties to begin bargaining. 

While the NLRB election process is supposed to be relatively simple, the strategy of union avoidance law firms follows a standard playbook—they use their overwhelming resources to exploit the NLRB’s administrative processes and sometimes create nearly endless delays. This includes challenging bargaining units and election results and filing endless appeals of adverse decisions (See Appendix Table 1 for examples). The result is to create an unnecessarily complicated and protracted legal process for workers. The NLRB’s own performance objectives aim to ensure that the median age of representation and unfair labor practice cases before the Board is 180 days or less (NLRB 2025). While the NLRB has achieved this goal for many years, the median age for cases is over 100 days and for some workers, it can take years. For example, the NLRB only recently ordered Amazon—an employer known for hiring Littler Mendelson, Morgan Lewis, and Ogletree Deakins—to bargain with workers who voted to unionize over four years ago (Bensinger 2026).

Impact of union avoidance

The roughly $1.7 billion U.S. employers spend each year on anti-union law firms and consultants has an undeniable impact on workers’ ability to organize and bargain collectively. It also contributes to the creation of an economy marked by inequality: It has been well documented that the decline in unionization has contributed to increased income inequality over the last several decades (Bivens et al. 2023). It is no coincidence that the overall decline in unionization follows decades of federal policy neglect that have weakened U.S. labor law. The loopholes in U.S. labor law, which union avoidance consultants and law firms exploit, routinely frustrate workers’ organizing and collective bargaining, enabling wealthy corporations to prosper at workers’ expense.

Why would these corporations want to frustrate workers’ organizing? Consider the benefits unions provide for workers and their communities. When workers join together in a union and engage in collective bargaining, they see higher wages and better benefits (McNicholas, Poydock, and Shierholz 2026). Further, in communities with higher union density rates, working families have higher incomes, greater access to health care, and few voter restrictions (McNicholas et al. 2025). It is clear that when unions are strong, workers have more power and their communities thrive.

Despite the erosion of U.S. labor law and the standard playbook of union avoidance, workers do win unions and union contracts. In 2025, 16.5 million workers in the United States were represented by a union—an increase of 463,000 from 2024 and the highest number of unionized workers in the U.S. in 16 years. The 2025 rise in union density coincides with a high public favorability toward unions, with nearly 70% of people in the U.S. viewing unions favorably (Brenan 2025). Further, research from the Pew Research Center finds that most people in the U.S. see the decline in union density as bad for the country (60%) and bad for working people (62%) (Van Green 2025).

To sustain the modest gains seen in union density in 2025, policymakers must act to restore workers’ rights to a union and collective bargaining. This is critical to the health of our economy and to ensuring that workers receive a fair share of the profits they help produce. Policymakers must pass the Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would help restore private-sector workers’ ability to form unions and bargain collectively.7 The PRO Act addresses many of the major shortcomings with U.S. labor law by establishing civil penalties for employers who violate workers’ rights, creating an election process that limits employer interference, and establishing a bargaining process for reaching a first contract in a timely manner. The PRO Act also would shed light on the union avoidance industry by requiring prompt disclosure of union-busting activities and closing the “advice” loophole through which employers and consultants have evaded reporting (McNicholas, Poydock, and Rhinehart 2021).

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Joe Fast and Hannah Faris for their research assistance for this report.

Appendix

Methodology for labor practice revenue estimate

Estimated revenue of company-level labor practices and of U.S. labor practices as a whole was calculated in the following manner. 

First, we divided the number of attorneys listed in a company’s labor practice in 2026 by the number of attorneys that Law.com reported that the firm had in 2024, the most recent year for which Law.com data are available. We treated that figure as an initial indicator of the fraction of the firm’s total revenue that came from its labor practice. We then multiplied that fraction by the company’s total 2024 revenue, as reported by Law.com. Next, we discounted the result by 50%, on the conservative assumption that half of the revenue generated by attorneys in a company’s labor practice was earned for work performed in other areas of law than labor law. (Many labor relations attorneys belong to multiple practices, often practicing both labor law and employment law at the same company.) This calculation yielded our estimate of the revenue generated by a firm’s labor practice in 2024, inclusive of both representation and consulting services. 

We performed this calculation for the six law firms with 1.5% market share or more in 2024, where market share is defined here as a firm’s share of all NLRB cases in 2024. We then estimated the total revenue generated by all U.S. labor practices by dividing the sum of the six firms’ estimated labor practice revenue by the sum of the six firms’ market share.

Market share data were obtained through a custom query of NLRB data compiled by Labor Data (https://labordata.bunkum.us/). The number of attorneys in a company’s labor practice was obtained by tallying the number of attorneys listed on each company’s labor relations practice page in March 2026 and weeding out any attorneys practicing outside the U.S. 

Note: The share of revenue generated by attorneys in a labor practice that comes exclusively from labor relations services (rather than other areas of practice, such as employment law) may vary significantly by each law firm. For example, our labor practice revenue estimate for Littler Mendelson is lower than our estimate for Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, even though the former has greater market share than the latter does. This may be because our 50% assumption is too low in Littler Mendelson’s case. Perhaps attorneys in Littler Mendelson’s labor practice specialize in labor relations more often and more intensively than attorneys in Ogletree’s labor practice, thereby leading to higher labor practice revenue for Littler than our estimate suggests.

Appendix Table 1

Notes

1. See Celine McNicholas, Margaret Poydock, Julia Wolfe, Ben Zipperer, Gordon Lafer, and Lola Loustaunau, Unlawful: U.S. Employers Are Charged with Violating Federal Law in 41.5% of All Union Election Campaigns, Economic Policy Institute, December 2019. To arrive at the $442 million figure, we take the $338 million dollar estimate from McNicholas et al. 2019, which covered the four-year period 2014–2017, and adjust it for inflation to 2025 dollars, according to Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) estimates using the annual average of the BLS CPI-U for 2014–2017 and BLS C-CPI-U for 2025. The estimated rates for consultants are from McNicholas et al. 2019.

2. Full methodology for this calculation can be found in the methodology section in the appendix.

3. We assume about half ($221 million) of the $442 million goes to attorney consultants for anti-union campaign services, which we also capture in the law firms’ labor practice revenue of $1.48 billion. To get to the $1.7 billion, we add the remaining of the $442 million ($221 million) on non-attorney consultants with the law firm revenue estimates ($1.48 billion).

4. Author’s analysis of public court documents and engagement letters sourced from LexisNexis and municipality websites.

5. Author’s analysis of public court documents and engagement letters sourced from LexisNexis and municipality websites.

6. Author’s analysis of public court documents and engagement letters sourced from LexisNexis and municipality websites.

7. Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize Act of 2025, [H.R. 20], 119th Cong. (2025).

References

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Bivens, Josh, Celine McNicholas, Margaret Poydock, Jennifer Sherer, and Monica Leon. 2023. What to Know About This Summer’s Strike Activity. Economic Policy Institute, August 2023.

Brenan, Megan. 2025. “Labor Union Approval Relatively Steady at 68% in U.S.” Gallup, August 28, 2025.

Correia, David. 2019. “Union Busting on Campus: Jackson Lewis and Higher Education Anti-Unionism.” Verso Books, March 11, 2019.

Department of Labor (DOL). n.d. Persuader Agreements: Ensuring Transparency in Reporting for Employer and Labor Relations (fact sheet). n.d.

Department of Labor, Office of Labor–Management Standards (OLMS). 2026. “OPDR–LM-10 Employer” (web page). Accessed May 15, 2026.

Gregg, Forest. 2026. “Labor Data.” Accessed May 15, 2026.

Jackson Lewis. 2026. “About Us” (web page). Accessed May 8, 2026.

Kaufman, Bruce E., and Paula E. Stephan. 1995. “The Role of Management Attorneys in Union Organizing Campaigns.” Journal of Labor Research 16 (December 1995): 439–454. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02685719.

LaborLab. 2025. One-Sided Transparency: The Growing Gap Between Required Annual Union Versus Employer and Persuader Filings and OLMS Compliance Efforts Continues to Widen. July 2025.

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Levine, Jonathan O., Tanja L. Thompson, Brooke E. Niedecken, and Brendan Fitzgerald. 2025. Littler’s 2025 Labor Survey Report. Littler Mendelson, September 30, 2025.

Littler Mendelson. 2026. “Our Firm History” (web page). Accessed May 8, 2026.

Logan, John. 2022. “Not Your Father’s Anti-Union Movement: Ten Key Facts About Starbucks’ Union Avoidance Law Firm, Littler Mendelson.” The Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA), March 7, 2022.

Logan, John. 2025. Corporate Union Busting in Plain Sight: How Amazon, Starbucks, and Trader Joe’s Crushed Dynamic Grassroots Worker Organizing Campaigns. Economic Policy Institute, January 2025.

McNicholas, Celine, and Margaret Poydock. 2019. How California’s AB5 Protects Workers from Misclassification (fact sheet). Economic Policy Institute, November 14, 2019.

McNicholas, Celine, Margaret Poydock, and Lynn Rhinehart. 2021. Why Workers Need the Protecting the Right to Organize Act (fact sheet). Economic Policy Institute, February 9, 2021.

McNicholas, Celine, Margaret Poydock, and Heidi Shierholz. 2026. Workers’ Resolve Drives Increase in Unionization in 2025. Economic Policy Institute, February 2026.

McNicholas, Celine, Margaret Poydock, Heidi Shierholz, and Hilary Wething. 2025. Unions Aren’t Just Good for Workers—They Also Benefit Communities and Democracy. Economic Policy Institute, August 2025. 

McNicholas, Celine, Margaret Poydock, Julia Wolfe, Ben Zipperer, Gordon Lafer, and Lola Loustaunau. 2019. Unlawful: U.S. Employers Are Charged with Violating Federal Law in 41.5% of All Union Election Campaigns. Economic Policy Institute, December 2019.

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National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). 2026. “Case Search” (web page). Accessed May 8, 2026.

Pinto, Maya. 2022. How the ‘Coalition for Workforce Innovation’ Is Putting Workers’ Rights at Risk. Gig Workers Rising, National Employment Law Project, PowerSwitch Action, Service Employees International Union, and Temp Worker Justice, July 2022.

Poydock, Margaret. 2020. “The Passage of California’s Proposition 22 Would Give Digital Platform Companies a Free Pass to Misclassify Their Workers.” Working Economics Blog (Economic Policy Institute), October 22, 2020.

Rhinehart, Lynn, and Celine McNicholas. 2024. “What’s Behind the Corporate Effort to Kneecap the National Labor Relations Board?: SpaceX, Amazon, Trader Joe’s, and Starbucks Are Trying to Have the NLRB Declared Unconstitutional—After Collectively Being Charged with Hundreds of Violations of Workers’ Organizing Rights.” Working Economics Blog (Economic Policy Institute), March 7, 2024.

Shierholz, Heidi, Celine McNicholas, Margaret Poydock, and Jennifer Sherer. 2024. Workers Want Unions, but the Latest Data Point to Obstacles in Their Path: Private-Sector Unionization Rose by More Than a Quarter Million in 2023, While Unionization in State and Local Governments Fell. Economic Policy Institute, January 2024.

Van Green, Ted. 2025. “Majorities of Adults See Decline of Union Membership as Bad for the U.S. and Working People.” Pew Research Center, August 27, 2025. 

Strengthening collective bargaining rights is one of the most powerful policy levers states have available to confront primary economic challenges facing all workers today: an affordability crisis driven by the long-term suppression of workers’ pay, growing income inequality, and persistent racial and gender labor market disparities. It’s widely recognized that in today’s wildly unequal economy, millions of workers wish they had a union contract but face daunting obstacles to exercising their legal rights to get one. Moreover, many workers have never been protected by federal labor law at all due to Jim Crow-era exclusions.  

For the second year in a row, Colorado and Virginia state legislators have passed landmark legislation to remove barriers to unionization:  

• In Colorado, legislators have passed the Worker Protection Act to repeal an 83-year-old state policy that has limited Colorado workers’ freedom to form unions by requiring they undergo a state-mandated “second election” before they can secure full collective bargaining rights.  

• In Virginia, lawmakers have passed collective bargaining legislation to ensure full union rights for more than 500,000 state and local government employees and home care workers—all of whom have historically been denied coverage under federal labor law. The legislation would replace Virginia’s longstanding ban on public employee collective bargaining that has resulted in one of the largest public-sector pay gaps in the nation. 

Both pieces of legislation would correct historical wrongs—restoring rights that Colorado and Virginia workers have been denied since the 1940s, when past state lawmakers adopted anti-union policies amid a wave of white supremacist, big business backlash to multiracial union organizing. Yet both pieces of legislation were vetoed by their states’ respective governors in 2025 and are now once again awaiting governors’ signatures in 2026. 

In Colorado, Governor Polis has already indicated intent to once again veto the Worker Protection Act, but it’s not too late for Polis to seize his second chance to sign the bill.  

In Virginia, Governor Glenn Youngkin vetoed the collective bargaining legislation in 2025 and was ineligible to run for reelection because of term limits. This year, when the legislation was first sent to newly elected Virginia Governor Spanberger, she proposed extensive, damaging amendments to weaken the bill instead of signing it. The General Assembly has since rejected those amendments, and now Spanberger has her own “second chance” to sign this transformative legislation into law. 

Meanwhile, scores of anti-worker actions from the Trump administration are continuing to accelerate a decades-long trend of weakening workers’ rights, suppressing wages, and eroding bargaining power. This year, state lawmakers have handed both Governor Polis and Governor Spanberger historic opportunities to rebalance unequal power in their states’ economies and remove major obstacles Coloradans and Virginians face to exercising their rights to unionize and collectively bargain. And the choices Polis and Spanberger make in the next few weeks will shape economic outcomes in their states for years to come.

Workers in Chicago, including many immigrants, went on strike on May 1 to demand the eight-hour workday. At least four strikers were killed while picketing the McCormick Harvester factory, at that point the largest factory in the world. A large rally was held on May 4 to protest violence against peaceful picketers. As police moved to disperse the crowd, someone threw a bomb that killed seven officers. Police fired back indiscriminately, wounding and killing an undetermined number of workers.

What followed was a sweeping crackdown: police raids, the arrests of hundreds of men and women, and the indictment of eight people—five of whom were German immigrants. The partisan judge Joseph E. Gary conducted the trial where all 12 jurors acknowledged prejudice against the defendants. All defendants were convicted with no evidence and seven were sentenced to death; four were hanged, one died by suicide, and two had their sentences commuted. The trial is widely considered a miscarriage of justice.

In the aftermath, socialists and unionists worldwide began marking May 1st as a day of international worker solidarity. However, in 1894, U.S. President Grover Cleveland—looking to make peace with labor prior to the midterm elections after more than 30 workers were killed during the Pullman Strike—established Labor Day in early September. He did this explicitly to avoid associating it with May Day and the labor unrest it represented. In 1955, at the height of the Cold War, President Eisenhower proclaimed May 1 “Loyalty Day” instead of “May Day” in response to the holiday’s popularity in communist countries.

Labor unions today

Now 140 years after Haymarket, workers are still fighting for higher pay, better working conditions, and a voice on the job. In recent decades, policymakers have done little to stem the relentless tide of anti-union actions by employers, conservative governments, and a hostile Supreme Court. As workers’ rights have been eroded, the share of unionized workers fell from over 30% in the 1950s to just 11.2% in 2025. Fewer workers were involved in major strikes or work stoppages in 2025 (307,000) than during the Haymarket year of 1886 (610,000).

Nonetheless, there are clear signs of momentum in the labor movement. The post-pandemic period has brought a notable resurgence in labor’s popularity and organizing activity. Figure A shows that 68% of Americans now approve of labor unions, levels not seen since the 1960s. Unions are also more highly regarded among young people. Further, 43% of Americans want unions to have more influence in the country, a record high.

Figure A

Not only are unions more popular, but more workers have been trying to join a union. Figure B shows that the 2024–2025 period saw the highest number of newly unionized workers since at least 2000.

Figure B

Indeed, while the Trump administration has taken a decidedly hostile approach to unions and made labor organizing more difficult, union representation in the United States increased by 463,000 in 2025. More workers were represented by a union than at any point in the past 16 years, a sign that workers see unions as a means of resisting authoritarianism.

The time is ripe for policymakers to support workers’ struggles for dignity and respect. Key policies such as passing the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, ensuring workers can reach a first contract, expanding collective bargaining rights, and eliminating anti-union “right-to-work” laws can help workers organize their workplaces. Beyond improving the lives of their members, unions have spillover effects that benefit whole communities and democracy.

This May Day, workers and their unions across the country are holding thousands of events, encouraging participants to join an economic blackout and “demand a nation that puts workers over billionaires.” Just as workers around the world came together to demand fair hours and wages after the events of 1886, we can hope the workers of the future will find inspiration from May Day 2026.

Once the Assembly’s bill reached her desk, Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger had the opportunity to strengthen it or sign it into law. Instead, Governor Spanberger put forward her own heavily amended version of the bill last week, weakening the proposed collective bargaining framework so extensively that her version would lock Virginia into an unstable, ineffective system in which collective bargaining would remain merely “optional” and where employers and workers would remain perpetually uncertain about what rules might apply to them from year to year depending on what appointees of future governors might decide. The governor’s amended bill will now be considered by the Assembly in its one-day veto session this week. Below, we analyze some of the many substantive differences between the Assembly bill and the governor’s bill, as well as the likely economic impacts.

Virginia’s ability to reap economic benefits of collective bargaining will depend on strength of any new law 

EPI has previously analyzed the economic importance of strengthening collective bargaining rights in Virginia, where the state’s long-standing ban on public-sector collective bargaining has suppressed workers’ wages and union membership. Our most recent analysis showed that state and local government employees in Virginia earn, on average, 26.7% less than private-sector peers with similar education and experience. Virginia’s public-sector pay gap is the second highest in the nation while its public-sector unionization rate (at 14.1%) is the fourth lowest, outcomes that our 50-state data show are closely correlated with the strength or weakness of a state’s collective bargaining laws. Recent EPI research further shows that beyond helping states narrow public-sector pay gaps and improve conditions for directly affected workers and the public they serve, stronger collective bargaining laws are highly correlated with widely shared benefits including higher wages, more equitable state economies, and healthier democracies.

State public-sector collective bargaining laws are complex and highly variable. In our prior research, we grouped state laws into three categories based on assessment of whether collective bargaining is:

1) illegal: state law prohibits public employers and unionized workers from entering into collective bargaining agreements.

2) permitted: collective bargaining is “optional” insofar as it is allowed in certain jurisdictions but occurs only if both parties agree to engage in it; whether parties are required to negotiate over wages or other terms and conditions of work is not defined in state law.

3) required: once a group of workers has gone through the process of forming a legally certified union, employers have a “duty to bargain” over pay (at a minimum), and there is a specified process for both parties to follow in negotiating to reach agreements that result in a legally binding collective bargaining agreement.

Currently, Virginia’s collective bargaining law straddles the first two categories: collective bargaining is illegal for units of state government in Virginia, but the state has recently (since 2021) permitted local governments to enact their own collective bargaining systems.

As shown in Table 1, data show that average public-sector pay gaps vary across states depending on the strength of their collective bargaining laws. Virginia’s large public-sector pay gap is an extreme outlier, currently exceeding even the average among all states with the weakest laws (where collective bargaining is illegal).

Table 1

Governor’s bill deletes essential elements of a strong collective bargaining system

Virginia lawmakers now face a choice between two dramatically different visions for collective bargaining: an Assembly bill that would move Virginia into the stronger “required” category, and the governor’s substitute bill that would lock Virginia into the weaker “permitted” category.

The Assembly’s collective bargaining bill includes clear language recognizing the rights of public employees to choose whether to unionize; setting forth consistent rules, timelines, and processes for workers and employers to follow for union elections and contract negotiations; and establishing a new, independent state labor board to support and administer the new framework across all covered state and local jurisdictions. The Assembly bill also has limitations—for example, it falls short of equalizing rights of all public employees by excluding most higher education workers—but it does provide a clear, strong roadmap for implementing a robust, effective collective bargaining system modeled on proven best practices from other states to serve as a solid foundation for Virginia to build on.

The governor’s amended version of the bill weakens all these key elements of the statutory framework proposed by the Assembly and the proposed labor board’s role in enforcing a clear statutory framework. In many important sections of the bill, the governor’s amendments include changing the word “shall” to the word “may”—a critical change that converts entire sections of statutory rules and requirements into mere suggestions, rather than legally enforceable expectations applying equally to all workers and employers. Another repeated pattern throughout the governor’s bill is the deletion and replacement of a host of detailed statutory guidelines with directives that such guidelines should instead be “determined by the board” or that the board “shall adopt regulations” to answer critical questions about workers’ rights and employer obligations in the unionization and collective bargaining process.

Table 2 summarizes just a few of the key differences between the Assembly bill and the governor’s bill. The Assembly bill proposes a framework similar to those successfully implemented in many other states, including statutory language defining the topics parties are required to negotiate over, clear rules for union elections and negotiations procedures, and binding arbitration to ensure that negotiations will eventually conclude with a contract settlement. These standard elements are essential to a strong, effective collective bargaining system that enables workers to have an equal voice at the bargaining table—but the governor’s bill removes all of these elements.

Table 2

The stark contrast between the scope of bargaining as defined in the Assembly bill versus the governor’s bill is especially salient. The strength of any collective bargaining system depends on clear, consistent rules for which topics unions and employers must be willing to discuss in negotiations and which subjects must (or may) legally be incorporated into a collective bargaining agreement. When subjects of bargaining are “permitted” but not required, parties may try to pick and choose what to discuss, one party may refuse to negotiate over matters that are important to the other, and non-mandatory topics are generally not considered as part of arbitration procedures and often therefore never get included in final contracts. Alarmingly, the governor’s bill leaves the scope of bargaining completely undetermined, giving the labor board discretion to determine when and whether it is “appropriate” to require parties to negotiate even over topics as basic as wages.

This change alone would lead us to categorize the governor’s bill as a model for “permitting” (but not requiring) collective bargaining, making it unlikely to significantly narrow Virginia’s public-sector pay gap or achieve other important economic outcomes associated with stronger collective bargaining laws. As shown above in Table 1, workers in states where collective bargaining is “permitted” but not required continue to experience pay gaps far above average (and far greater than in most states with strong collective bargaining laws).

At a minimum, any collective bargaining legislation in Virginia should be measured against the status quo and whether it represents progress toward achieving full and equal collective bargaining for all workers. Here, the governor’s bill falls woefully short and could even represent a step backwards for some workers. At best, the governor’s bill would lock Virginia into a system where collective bargaining becomes “permitted” for more workers than are currently covered by local collective bargaining ordinances. At worst—depending on rules yet to be determined by a future labor board—the governor’s bill could erode existing rights of some local government workers who might find themselves in the future governed by weaker state collective bargaining procedures than those they’ve been able to win at the local level since 2021.

The governor’s bill includes additional significant changes too numerous to cover in detail here. Among other notable amendments that weaken the proposed framework for collective bargaining or its implementation, the governor’s bill:

• delays application of the new law to January 1, 2030, for local governments
• excludes Virginia Port Authority workers from coverage
• maintains exclusion of most higher education workers from coverage (including faculty, professional staff, researchers, graduate assistants, etc.) and specifies that this exclusion extends to health care workers at university hospitals and health care facilities

In the short term, the numerous exclusions, delays, and weaknesses introduced or expanded by the governor’s bill would leave Virginia workers with a limited patchwork of different rights covering different localities and occupations. In the long term, this would create permanent uncertainty about whether and when various rules covering particular groups of workers might be changed by the labor board.

It’s clear that the fight to ensure every employee in Virginia has a voice on the job has only just begun. Collective bargaining is a fundamental right, not intended to be left up to the whims of individual local elected officials or to-be-determined future members of a new state labor board. Collective bargaining is both a labor issue and a civil rights issue, as NAACP Virginia State Conference leaders recently pointed out. Nowhere is this clearer than in Virginia, where the denial of collective bargaining rights to generations of workers is directly rooted in a history of white supremacist backlash against Black worker organizing. Virginia lawmakers still have a chance to enact meaningful collective bargaining legislation in 2026, but doing so will first require rejecting the damaging amendments put forward by Governor Spanberger.

Key takeaways:

• The growing revenue of college sports and the heightened attention on the experience of college athletes suggest that college athletics is far from the amateur endeavor it might have started as decades ago.
• Recent policy changes have allowed some college athletes to receive compensation, whether in the form of name, image, and likeness (NIL) rights or revenue sharing. However, not all college athletes have the right to be compensated.
• The NCAA has backed the SCORE Act, which would jeopardize college athlete compensation by prohibiting them from being classified as employees in the first place.
• Policymakers should consider proposals that strengthen rights for college athletes, including granting them employee status under federal labor laws.

Introduction

It has long been argued that college athletes should not receive compensation to maintain the “amateurism” of college sports. However, the growing revenue generated from college sports and heightened attention on the experience of college athletes suggest that college athletics is far from an amateur endeavor.

Only recently have college athletes been granted the right to be compensated for name, image, and likeness (NIL) rights. This decision came into effect after years of antitrust lawsuits against the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) compensation rules. These lawsuits culminated in the Supreme Court decision in NCAA v. Alston, as well as a growing number of states enacting their own compensation laws for college athletes. The recent House v. NCAA settlement allows Division I schools—those with the largest and most economically lucrative athletic programs—to share revenue with college athletes, and further expands opportunities for college athletes to receive compensation.

As a result of these policy changes and a growing movement among college athletes to demand fair compensation for their performance, federal policymakers have put forward proposals to address college athlete compensation. In this blog post, we examine these proposals and their impacts on college athletes and their labor/employment status.

A brief history of college athlete compensation

Despite claims of “amateurism” in college sports, the experience of college athletes showcases a reality in which athletics is prioritized over academics. For example, while the NCAA puts limits on how many hours college athletes can engage in athletic-related activities during playing season, many coaches create expectations for students to exceed these limits, with some athletes exceeding over 40 hours per week. News coverage has reported that coaches have issued fines to athletes who miss practices. Many college athletes are also required to travel for their games, forcing them to miss classes. If college athletes fail to meet these expectations, they may be cut from the team, which could jeopardize future scholarships and other academic opportunities.

Simply put, some college athletes are expected to perform a physical regimen that more closely resembles professional sports than amateur endeavors on top of their academic coursework. The athletic commitment is demanding enough to be its own job, yet college athletes are performing them without any meaningful compensation in return.

In recent years, there have been several policy changes related to college athlete compensation. In 2019, California became the first state to pass a law that granted college athletes NIL rights. The NCAA permitted NIL compensation in 2021 and since then, more than 30 states have enacted laws related to college athlete compensation, with remaining states deferring to NCAA rules to regulate such compensation.

A primary driver of the NCAA’s change of rules regarding NIL compensation was the 2021 Supreme Court decision in NCAA v. Alston. The unanimous decision upheld a lower court decision that found the NCAA’s rules restricting certain educational benefits for college athletes violated federal antitrust laws. In a concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh questioned “whether the NCAA’s remaining compensation rules can pass muster under ordinary rule of reason scrutiny” and suggested collective bargaining as an avenue for college athletes to receive a fairer share of the revenue that they generate for their schools. Soon after the NCAA v. Alston decision, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo issued a memorandum taking the position that college athletes are employees under the National Labor Relations Act.

In response to this memo, men’s basketball players at Dartmouth College filed for a union election petition at the NLRB; however, the petition was withdrawn shortly after the 2024 presidential election. In January 2025, Acting General Counsel William Cowen rescinded Abruzzo’s memorandum, leaving college athletes’ employee status in limbo.

The House v. NCAA settlement, which allowed Division I schools to share revenue directly with college athletes, was another turning point in the college athlete compensation landscape. The majority of states with college athlete compensation laws have considered legislation to modify their statues to reflect the terms of the House settlement, but not all have done so.

Who are college athletes?

The National Collegiate Athletic Association is the governing body for college athletics in the United States, overseeing sports programs for 557,000 college athletes at more than 1,100 colleges. It organizes institutions into three divisions based on size, athletic scope, and financial resources. Division I schools are the largest, with the most extensive athletic programs and highest scholarship limits. Approximately 37% of college athletes compete for Division I schools. Division II schools offer fewer scholarships and financial resources, while Division III has the greatest share of college athletes (38%), but offers no athletic scholarships.

During the 2024–2025 school year, the college athlete population was 57% male and 43% female. These young men and women are diverse: 61% are white, 16% are Black, 7% are Hispanic or Latino, 7% report more than two races, and 2% are Asian. Breaking down demographics by race and gender, we find that white males make up the largest group at 32%, followed by white females at 28%, Black males at 12%, and Black females at 4%. The remaining athletes fall into other demographic categories. If we focus on men’s basketball and men’s football athletes at the highest revenue-earning,1 there are 11,504 total athletes, 32% of whom are white and 48% of whom are Black, with the remaining athletes falling into an “other” race category.

Figure A

In terms of geography, college athletes tend to be from the most populous states. According to estimates using NCAA data and population data from Census, most student-athletes are from California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Pennsylvania (in descending order). On a per capita basis, it is Georgia, North Carolina, and Michigan (in descending order) that produce the highest rates of college athletes. This is likely due to having several large state universities with strong athletic programs and an impressive high school sports infrastructure. NCAA-affiliated institutions are also concentrated in the populous states, but especially among states in the Northeast. The states with the most NCAA schools are Pennsylvania (96), New York (93), California (59), Texas (53), and Massachusetts (51).

Current policy landscape

As mentioned above, many states have enacted laws that grant college athletes NIL rights. In the wake of the House v. NCAA settlement, there have been calls for federal policymakers to pass legislation addressing college athlete compensation.

One of the most prominent pieces of federal legislation is the Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements (SCORE) Act. Backed by the NCAA, this bill would prohibit college athletes from being classified as employees, denying basic labor rights to over half a million young people. The bill creates a federal standard for NIL rights. In doing so, the SCORE Act preempts state legislation concerning college athlete compensation, creating a ceiling rather than a floor for setting standards around college athlete compensation. Further, the SCORE Act limits the types of NIL deals athletes can enter, places caps on NIL payments, and restricts athletes’ abilities to transfer and play at new schools. Finally, the bill would grant the NCAA broad antitrust immunity by authorizing them to limit revenue sharing and education-related benefits to athletes.

On April 3, 2026, President Trump issued an executive order on college athletics. Similar to the SCORE Act, the order directs the NCAA to tighten rules on transfers, eligibility, and NIL compensation, threatening noncompliant schools with the loss of federal funding. It does not, however, address whether college athletes are employees (an earlier executive order from Trump directed the Department of Labor and National Labor Relations Board to clarify employee status of college athletes). Multiple lawyers have argued the latest executive order would not survive a legal challenge. The NCAA president nonetheless praised it, and both the administration and conference commissioners are using the order to push Congress to pass the SCORE Act.

The Student Athlete Fairness & Enforcement (SAFE) Act is another proposal that seeks to codify a federal standard for NIL rights. However, unlike the SCORE Act, the SAFE Act establishes strong health and safety protections for college athletes, allows flexibility for transfers, and places penalties on bad actor agents, among other reforms. Furthermore, the bill does not address college athletes’ employee status or shield the NCAA from antitrust liability.

By far the most effective policy solution for college athletes to be fairly compensated is to grant them the right to form unions and bargain collectively. Legislation like the College Athlete Right to Organize Act  would classify college athletes as employees, granting them the right to form unions and bargaining collectively under the National Labor Relations Act. The bill would also amend the NLRA to define public colleges—in addition to private colleges—as an employer in the context of intercollegiate sports so that all college athletes have the right to organize and collectively bargain.

Below we evaluate whom these proposals impact and estimate how much revenue the college sports industry generates under current compensation policies.

College athlete demographics versus college attendee demographics

College sports are frequently presented as disproportionately Black, but the data show a slightly different story. Black college athletes make up roughly 16% (89,000) of all college athletes compared with 13% (3.31 million) of the total college student population, not significantly different from the NCAA share. Hispanics are drastically underrepresented in the NCAA, accounting for only 7% of college athletes, despite representing over 20% of total college enrollment. In fact, it is white college athletes, and white male athletes in particular, who are disproportionately represented in college athletics: While 61% of college athletes are white and 32% are white males, only 48% of all college students are white and only 19.1% are white males. Notably, it is Black female athletes who are left out of NCAA college athletics at the highest rates. While they account for 8.3% of total college enrollment (2.14 million), they are only 4.5% of total college athletes in the NCAA (25,000).

Figure B

How much do collegiate sports make?

By far, the most economically lucrative division in the NCAA is Division I sports, which includes 37% of total athletes but generates 96% of total revenue across the three divisions, according to the NCAA. According to the Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database (an authoritative source on college athletics finances and a better representation of self-generated revenue), Division I schools generated $14.6 billion during the 2024 fiscal year. For context, of the five major professional sports leagues in the United States, only the NFL generated more revenue than Division I schools did during the same time period. The NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, and MLS generated $22.2 billion, $12.8 billion, $12.3 billion, $6.6 billion, and $2.2 billion, respectively, in fiscal year 2024. The primary revenue sources for NCAA Division I are media rights (27%), donor contributions (22%), ticket sales (15%), and institutional support (14%). NCAA Division I revenue has grown 115% (in 2024$) since 2015.

Figure C

Due to the House v. NCAA settlement, schools gained the ability to share revenue directly with athletes beginning in the 2025–2026 school year, adding to any third-party NIL earnings athletes may receive. Though official figures for both revenue sharing and NIL deals are unavailable, schools are currently capped at $20.5 million under the revenue-sharing agreement. Not every university joined the new revenue-sharing arrangement, but every Power 4 school did (the 68 universities in the four highest revenue-generating conferences). Under the generous assumption that all Power 4 schools share the full $20.5 million with their athletes, this would amount to approximately $1.394 billion in athlete earnings, or about 15.1% of total revenue across these conferences. For comparison, coaches at the same set of schools receive $2.3 billion in compensation or 19% of total expenditure. However, if implemented as intended, the revenue-sharing agreement would be a step-up for revenue-generating athletes. Prior to House v. NCAA, the most Power 4 schools could provide the athletes was $2 to 4 million dollars in athletic scholarship money.

Conclusion

Despite the growing revenue that athletes are generating for college sports, many college athletes are not being compensated for their work. Recent policy changes have allowed some college athletes to receive compensation, whether in the form of NIL rights or revenue sharing. However, the reality is that not all college athletes have the opportunity to be compensated. Federal policy proposals, such as the SCORE Act, would further jeopardize college athlete compensation by prohibiting them from being classified as employees in the first place. It is bad policy to deny any worker basic labor rights. Policymakers should consider proposals that strengthen rights for college athletes, including granting them employee status under federal labor laws.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the Notre Dame Student Policy Network (SPN) for their contributions to the background research for this blog post. The authors would like to thank Billy Bonnist and Liesl Erhardt for leading the SPN team, which included Sarah Francis, Evan Fitzpatrick, Ciara Gilligan, Anvita Jaipura, Owen Murphy, and Caroline Streicker.

1. Defined as the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) autonomy schools or schools in the Power 4 (formerly Power 5) conferences. It is worth acknowledging that other sports also produce significant revenue, including women’s basketball, softball, men’s baseball, and women’s volleyball.

The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) is a small, independent agency whose mission is to support businesses and workers in resolving workplace disputes and building positive labor-management relationships. FMCS has no authority to adjudicate disputes or issue regulations. Outside of the health care industry, it cannot require any business, worker, or union to participate in mediation or take any particular action. Rather, FMCS uses its expertise and experience to help parties find mutually agreeable solutions to workplace disputes. Through its work, FMCS has helped resolve thousands of workplace disputes and saved the U.S. economy hundreds of millions of dollars annually (FMCS 2025a).

In spite of this, the Trump administration has targeted this agency for elimination. Trump first attempted to shut down the agency by laying off almost all of its employees, but he was stopped by two lawsuits and two federal court injunctions. Trump’s proposed fiscal year (FY) 2026 budget included only $7.4 million for FMCS to use in shutting down the agency. In a series of continuing resolutions, Congress has rejected the Trump administration’s proposal and has continued to fund FMCS at close to its FY 2025 levels.1  

This report describes FMCS’s work and its importance to our national policy of supporting collective bargaining. It goes on to detail the Trump administration’s attacks on the agency and efforts to resist these attacks. The report concludes with recommendations for rebuilding and maintaining a quality, effective FMCS—recommendations that can also be implemented by states that have their own mediation agencies.

What is FMCS?

FMCS is a small, independent federal agency established by Congress to assist companies, workers, and their unions in building productive labor-management relationships and preventing costly and disruptive workplace disputes. Unlike most federal agencies, FMCS has no regulatory power and cannot force any company, worker, or union to agree to any term or participate in mediation (outside of the health care industry). It is a service agency that provides support to parties in the collective bargaining process and other aspects of labor-management relations.2

FMCS is headed by a presidentially nominated, Senate-confirmed director.4 Over the years, most FMCS directors have been individuals with broad collective bargaining experience and extensive relationships in the labor and management communities, which has brought stature and credibility to the agency and its work. However, FMCS has not had a Senate-confirmed director since 2021. President Biden’s nominee to lead the agency was not confirmed by the U.S. Senate, and President Trump has not nominated anyone to fill the director role and instead has tried to shutter the agency altogether.

FMCS is, and has always been, a small agency. In FY 2025, FMCS received a $55 million appropriation from Congress, representing .0014% of the federal budget (FMCS 2025a). This funding supported a staff of approximately 200 employees located in six regions around the country and Washington, D.C., the vast majority of whom were mediators. As previously noted, President Trump is attempting to shutter the agency and cut its funding to only the funds needed to shut down the agency (FMCS 2025b). In a series of actions, Congress has rejected Trump’s proposal and has continued to fund the agency at $48.7 million, close to its FY 2025 level.  

Because of the Trump administration’s attacks on the agency and the uncertainty created for FMCS employees, scores of mediators have left the agency. According to FMCS’s website, only 58 mediators remain at the agency (FMCS 2026).  

FMCS’s work

FMCS’s primary role is to provide training and mediation services to employers and unions engaged in collective bargaining. These services are provided at no cost to the parties.

In FY 2024, the last year for which full data are available, FMCS provided collective bargaining mediation services in 2,318 cases (FMCS 2025b). (Under the law, parties in the private sector must file a notice with FMCS when they seek to amend or renew a collective bargaining agreement. When FMCS receives such a notice—called an F-7 notice—it opens a case.) In FY 2024, 93.5% of mediated cases were settled, including several major and significant disputes (FMCS 2026b).  

Prior to the Trump administration’s efforts to shut down the agency, FMCS also provided grievance mediation services to resolve disputes arising under collective bargaining agreements (CBAs). Most CBAs include a dispute resolution process, under which workers can file grievances over alleged violations of the CBA and seek a remedy. Some collective bargaining agreements explicitly require the parties to seek FMCS mediation if their efforts to resolve the grievance are not successful. 

In FY 2024, FMCS mediated 1,362 grievances, almost half (47.2%) of which were settled in mediation. FMCS is not currently providing grievance mediation services.

Prior to Trump’s attempted shutdown, FMCS provided training to businesses and employees on the collective bargaining process and dispute resolution. These training services were especially helpful to parties entering into a new collective bargaining relationship, because they often are not familiar with collective bargaining and ways of building productive relationships.

In FY 2024, FMCS conducted 1,477 training programs on developing strong labor-management relationships. FMCS is not currently providing training services.

Table 1

As noted, all of these services are provided by FMCS at no cost to the parties, in furtherance of the national policy in support of collective bargaining and the peaceful resolution of workplace disputes expressed in the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and the Labor Management Relations Act. The provision of these services at no charge is especially important for smaller employers and unions who lack the financial resources to hire mediators on the private market.

Most grievance procedures in CBAs call for arbitration if the parties are unable to resolve a grievance themselves. FMCS supports the arbitration process by maintaining a roster of arbitrators that the parties can request for a nominal fee. In FY 2024, FMCS provided 10,000 panels of arbitrators for the parties to utilize in selecting an arbitrator to resolve a workplace dispute.

Congress has broadened FMCS’s mandate several times over the years, including to provide mediation and alternative dispute resolution services to the public sector. Many states reference FMCS in their state collective bargaining statutes, and many state public-sector CBAs similarly call on the parties to utilize FMCS’s services to resolve disputes.5 FMCS has also been directed to assist in negotiated rulemaking proceedings, although rulemakings of this nature have been rare in recent years.  

In 1978, Congress also broadened FMCS’s mandate to include support for labor-management committees and similar labor-management cooperative activities. Initially, FMCS received additional appropriations to support this work, including the ability to offer grants to support this work, but labor-management grants have not been funded for many years.

The Trump attacks

On March 14, 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order (EO) 14238, “Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy,” which directed several agencies, including FMCS, to reduce their operations to their bare statutory minimum. FMCS’s leadership stated that FMCS needed at least 80–100 mediators to meet its statutory duties, and could only do so if mediation was held virtually instead of in-person. Nevertheless, representatives of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) ordered the agency to reduce its staff to five mediators and approximately eight additional staff (AFL-CIO 2025). All other staff were placed on administrative leave as of March 26, 2025, mediation and training sessions were canceled, and FMCS’s regional offices were closed. Employees began receiving formal Reduction in Force notices at the end of March 2025.

The impact on FMCS’s operations was immediate. Mediators who were working with employers and unions to reach collective bargaining agreements abruptly canceled mediation sessions, leaving the parties in the lurch. Some of the affected parties included the United Federation of Teachers and the Bronx Global Learning Institute for Girls, who were working with an FMCS mediator on reaching an initial collective bargaining agreement when the mediator was placed on administrative leave and canceled scheduled mediation sessions.  Providence Place and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa were working with a mediator to settle their contract and avoid additional strikes, but mediation was canceled when their mediator was placed on administrative leave. The same was true for grocery workers in California, represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. Their efforts to mediate a new collective bargaining agreement with California grocery stores stalled when their FMCS mediator was suddenly placed on administrative leave. A school district in Illinois had been working with FMCS mediators for months when mediation sessions were canceled after the agency was all but shuttered and their mediator was placed on administrative leave. A hospital in Rhode Island faced a similar fate when FMCS mediation to resolve a dispute with United Nurses and Allied Professionals was canceled, placing the hospital at risk of a major work stoppage.6 

In addition, other valuable FMCS services were canceled. This included a Biden-era initiative under which FMCS offered to conduct free card check verification services (FMCS 2022a; FMCS 2022b). These free card check services were provided to employers and unions who agreed to begin a collective bargaining relationship upon proof of majority support for unionization among employees, rather than go through the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) representation election process. Voluntary recognition of unions through card check is a long-standing practice that allows the parties to begin their relationship on less adversarial terms. FMCS abruptly canceled these services when Trump proposed to eliminate the agency (Eidelson 2025). 

A group of state attorneys general quickly filed a lawsuit over the Trump administration’s attempted shutdown of FMCS and other agencies, arguing that the administration’s unilateral action was contrary to the underlying statutes establishing and funding the agencies and beyond the president’s authority.7 The lawsuit described the states’ reliance on FMCS to mediate labor-management disputes involving state employees and detailed the harms to their states caused by the Trump administration’s abrupt gutting of FMCS. The lawsuit was successful, with a federal district judge issuing an injunction ordering the Trump administration to cease implementation of Executive Order 14238 and to reverse the cuts that had already been made.8 Similarly, a group of unions that rely on FMCS’s services to mediate and resolve labor-management disputes filed a lawsuit over the Trump administration’s attempt to shut down FMCS (AFL-CIO 2025). As with the state lawsuit, the unions won an injunction stopping the administration from implementing EO 14238 and ordering it to reverse the cuts it had already made.

While the lawsuits and rulings have been essential to FMCS’s survival, severe damage to the agency has already been done. Scores of talented mediators have left the agency for other jobs, worried about the uncertainty of continued employment at FMCS. Only 58 mediators remain at an agency that previously employed almost three times that number. At first, FMCS drastically limited its services, making mediation available only for bargaining units of 1,000 or more employees (or 250 for health care). After the first court injunction, FMCS issued a new policy providing mediators for all health care disputes but limiting mediation for all other private-sector disputes to those involving bargaining units of 250 or more employees—a huge change from the practices in place before March 2025. FMCS provided no reasoning or justification for the new 250-employee threshold. Moreover, FMCS is offering only virtual mediation services, which some parties find less effective than in-person mediation.

The ongoing cutbacks and chaos at the agency have left employers, workers, and unions with less confidence in the agency and its operations, not knowing whether or when the Trump administration will make another attempt to shutter the agency.

Businesses and workers have good reason to worry about FMCS’s survival under the Trump administration. The administration requested only $7.4 million in funding for the agency for FY 2026, all to be used to shut down the agency. Fortunately, Congress rejected the Trump Administration’s proposal and has continued to fund FMCS at close to its FY 2025 level.  

Because of the Trump administration’s attacks on FMCS, several states—including Michigan, California, Minnesota, Illinois, New York, and others—have expanded their state mediation bureaus to offer some of the services that FMCS is no longer able to offer (Purifoy 2025). But these state efforts do not come close to the comprehensive services FMCS was previously able to offer.

Attacks on FMCS independence and impartiality

A hallmark of FMCS’s work over the years has been its independence and impartiality in providing its services. As previously noted, outside of health care, FMCS has no authority to require any entity to utilize its services. Parties voluntarily agree to bring in FMCS. The skills, reputation, and impartiality of FMCS mediators are key to their credibility and the willingness of parties to engage and trust them.

FMCS was created as an independent agency out of the former U.S. Conciliation Service, which was housed at the U.S. Department of Labor. Employers insisted on separating the mediation service from DOL over concerns that mediators were not impartial and favored unions. As this history shows, FMCS’s independence and impartiality are central to the operations and success of the agency.

FMCS is run by a presidentially nominated and Senate-confirmed director, who is a political appointee the president can remove at any time, although no president has ever done so. FMCS directors have typically been established, respected practitioners in labor-management relations, whose expertise and relationships have given the parties confidence in the quality and impartiality of FMCS’s operations.

FMCS’s independence and impartiality are threatened by the Trump administration’s efforts to take over and run the operations of independent agencies like FMCS. As already described, EO 14238 attempted to all but shutter the agency. Another Trump executive order, EO 14215, issued on February 18, 2025, attempts to control the activities of independent agencies like FMCS by giving the Director of the Office of Management and Budget extensive control over the priorities and expenditures of independent agencies (McFerran and McNicholas 2025). And President Trump has aggressively asserted his authority to remove Senate-confirmed members of independent agencies, boards, and commissions, demonstrating his belief that these agencies and their appointees are under his ultimate authority and control. All of these actions put FMCS’s independence and impartiality at risk (leaving aside the risk posed by the Trump administration’s efforts to abolish the agency altogether.)

FMCS and the first contract problem

The challenge of reaching an initial collective bargaining agreement when workers first organize their union is a serious and persistent problem. Research shows that only slightly more than one-third of new bargaining units reach an initial agreement within one year, and one-third of all bargaining units go three years or more without reaching an initial agreement (Bronfenbrenner 2022). The National Labor Relations Act does not authorize penalties or other monetary sanctions for delaying the bargaining process. Employers exploit this weakness in the law to slow-walk the bargaining process and avoid reaching an agreement with newly organized workers, because they know workers will get frustrated. This undermines the collective bargaining process and deprives workers of the goal they organized for—a binding contract governing their terms and conditions of employment. 

During the Biden administration, FMCS and the NLRB took action to try to help address the first contract problem (FMCS 2026c; NLRB 2022). When notified by the NLRB of a newly organized unit, FMCS proactively reached out to the parties and offered its training and mediation services in an effort to help the parties in the bargaining process. The NLRB trained FMCS mediators on the law of bargaining so that mediators could bring this additional knowledge to their work. Because FMCS’s services are voluntary on the parties’ part—outside of health care—FMCS could not force the parties to engage in mediation or training. But FMCS tried to be proactive with the parties in offering its assistance.9  

FMCS successfully helped IAM Union (formerly the International Association of Machinists) and the Apple Company reach an initial collective bargaining agreement at the first unionized Apple store in Towson, Md. FMCS helped thousands of researchers reach an initial agreement with the National Institutes of Health. These are but two examples of FMCS’s work in this important area.

For decades, legislation has been introduced to address the first contract problem. The Employee Free Choice Act, introduced and passed by the House of Representatives in the late 2000s, included a first contract mediation and arbitration process to ensure that employers and unions reached an initial collective bargaining agreement in a reasonable amount of time. Similarly, provisions requiring first contract mediation and arbitration are a centerpiece of the comprehensive Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which also would establish monetary penalties for violations of the NLRA, override state “right-to-work” laws, ban captive audience meetings and prevent other employer interference, and more.

In March 2025, U.S. Senators Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Cory Booker (D-Nj.) introduced the Faster Labor Contracts Act, which contains the first contract mediation and arbitration provisions from the PRO Act.10 The legislation would require parties to begin bargaining promptly after a union is certified, and if bargaining fails to produce an agreement within 90 days (or longer if the parties agree), the parties would be required to engage in mediation. If mediation was not successful, an arbitration panel would be convened to hear from both parties and render a final and binding decision on the terms of an initial collective bargaining agreement. 

Both the PRO Act and the Faster Labor Contracts Act rely on the FMCS to provide the mediation and arbitration services. It is ironic that the legislation has been introduced by members of the same political party whose president is trying to eliminate FMCS—the very agency at the heart of making the legislation work.  

Without a robust, government-supported mediation and arbitration system, neither the Faster Labor Contracts Act nor the PRO Act will live up to its promise. 

Recommendations for restoring and improving FMCS

FMCS performs a valuable service to employers and workers by helping resolve workplace disputes and build better labor-management relationships—a service that the private market cannot replace at scale. It will take years to undo the damage inflicted on the agency by the Trump administration’s attacks, but it is essential that Congress takes action to restore and sustain the agency.  

The remedies are practical, not symbolic. FMCS must be restored as a reliable, nationwide, politically-insulated service with a trained bench of labor-specialized mediators and a sustained development pipeline. The recommendations that follow are designed to stabilize service delivery quickly, rebuild workforce and leadership capacity, and restore the structural independence that labor and management count on when they engage FMCS to help resolve an important dispute.

1. FMCS’s funding and staffing must be restored to FY 2025 levels so that the agency can continue to function and provide much-needed services to employers, workers, and unions.
2. FMCS should provide services in any dispute with the potential to disrupt commerce and not impose arbitrary thresholds, and it should provide in-person mediation services, not just virtual services.
3. FMCS must remain independent from political influence and control. Independence and impartiality is the hallmark of FMCS’s existence and success. The Trump administration should stop trying to control FMCS’s spending and operations and leave these decisions to the experts. FMCS should remain an independent, expert agency—it should not be folded into the Department of Labor or any other agency. Doing so would undermine FMCS’s impartiality, and the other agencies lack FMCS’s expertise.
4. FMCS has suffered from the lack of a Senate-confirmed director. The failure of the Biden administration—widely regarded as the most pro-union administration in history—to prioritize and win Senate confirmation of an FMCS director was detrimental to the agency’s operations and stature. Every administration should prioritize, nominate, and win Senate confirmation of an experienced, respected practitioner in labor-management relations to lead FMCS’s operations.
5. FMCS should resume free card check services in support of the voluntary recognition process. If employers are willing to recognize their employees’ union based on a showing of majority support without requiring workers to go through the NLRB election process, FMCS should be there to assist them. The Trump administration’s elimination of this service was misguided and undermined a long-standing practice by which companies and workers start their collective bargaining relationships on a more positive, less adversarial basis.
6. With restored funding and staffing, FMCS should prioritize the establishment of a special unit to focus on assisting parties in reaching initial collective bargaining agreements. This unit should be specially skilled and trained in collective bargaining and should be made available to the parties in newly organized bargaining units. Relatedly, Congress should recognize the importance of FMCS to the first contract mediation process. It should ensure that FMCS has sufficient funding to carry out this work and must increase FMCS’s funding and first contract mediation staffing and expertise if the Faster Labor Contracts Act or PRO Act become law.  
7. With restored funding and staffing, FMCS should prioritize the hiring, training, and retention of mediators experienced and skilled in mediating in a collective bargaining setting. Because Congress has broadened FMCS’s mandate over the years to include a number of activities in addition to collective bargaining mediation, FMCS’s services have become more varied and diffused. In order to have the credibility and stature to effectively assist in the collective bargaining process, FMCS should highlight collective bargaining mediation as its core mission and prioritize staffing and funding for these activities.
8. Relatedly, FMCS should highlight and publicize the importance and benefits of collective bargaining to employers, workers, and our economy. Congress should specifically direct FMCS to publish research and reports in this area and to coordinate with other labor and research agencies in collecting and analyzing relevant data. Several high-profile events were held during the Obama administration during the FMCS directorships of George Cohen and Allison Beck (the first and only woman to date to run FMCS). FMCS is uniquely positioned to do this work, as an agency explicitly created by Congress to support the collective bargaining process.
9. FMCS should explore ways to maximize the impact of its work by discouraging parties from engaging FMCS too early in the bargaining process.
10. The business community needs to speak up and support FMCS. FMCS is a service agency that supports employers and workers. FMCS helps prevent costly disputes and facilitate positive labor-management relations. Unions have actively worked to save FMCS through litigation and other efforts. The utter silence of the business community in response to the Trump administration’s attempts to shut down FMCS is inexplicable. The business community should voice support for restoring and maintaining FMCS.
11. FMCS leadership should prioritize and establish relationships with key Capitol Hill offices and the White House, and hire a government affairs director to lead this work. This would help ensure that key players are knowledgeable and up to date on FMCS’s work, which would be helpful in the appropriations and oversight process. Relatedly, FMCS should prioritize external communications about its work, the importance of collective bargaining to our economy, and the benefits of resolving workplace disputes through mediation.

Conclusion

The Trump administration’s attacks on FMCS and its independence have weakened and undermined the agency, its staff and morale, its operations, and its credibility. Only through the efforts of litigation and Congress has FMCS been able to survive, albeit in its weakened state. As a result, employers, workers, and unions have been deprived of a valuable service that Congress established nearly 70 years ago to help prevent and resolve workplace disputes. The Trump administration’s attacks are counterproductive and short-sighted and have undermined our national policy in favor of collective bargaining. Adoption of the recommendations outlined in this report would help restore FMCS to its original function and benefit employers, workers, unions, and our economy.

Notes

1. Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026, [H.R. 7148], 119th Congress (2026).

2. Parties are required to participate in FMCS mediation in the health care industry, 29 U.S.C. 158(d), but FMCS has no power to prevent parties from engaging in strikes or lockouts if they fail to reach agreement. In contrast, the National Mediation Board (NMB) can and does require parties to engage in NMB mediation if the parties are not able to resolve a dispute on their own. 45 U.S.C. 155. This system was established by Congress to minimize the likelihood of disruptive labor disputes in the rail and airline industries. 45 U.S.C. 151a.

3. 29 U.S.C. 172(d).

4. 29 U.S.C. 172(a).

5. State of Rhode Island v. Trump. https://www.pelrb.nm.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/RI-Fed-Court-Decision-Imposing-Injunction-2025-05-06-1.pdf

6. State of Rhode Island v. Trump. https://www.pelrb.nm.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/RI-Fed-Court-Decision-Imposing-Injunction-2025-05-06-1.pdf

7. State of Rhode Island v. Trump. https://www.pelrb.nm.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/RI-Fed-Court-Decision-Imposing-Injunction-2025-05-06-1.pdf

8. State of Rhode Island v. Trump. https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/court-filings/state-of-rhode-island-et-al-v-donald-j-trump-institute-of-museum-and-library-services-preliminary-injunction-2025.pdf

9. As part of the Biden administration’s White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment, efforts were made to try to require certain federal contractors to utilize FMCS’s services when workers first organized a union, but these efforts did not come to fruition (DOL n.d; WH Task Force 2023). Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su issued a “first contract challenge” to newly organized companies, urging them to reach an agreement with employees within one year. She worked closely with BlueBird Bus Company and the United Steelworkers on meeting this goal and celebrated in person with them in Georgia when they succeeded (DOL 2024). However, the first contract challenge was not broadly implemented before the Biden administration left office.

10. Faster Labor Contracts Act, [S. 844], 119th Congress (2025).

References

AFL-CIO. 2025. “AFL-CIO, Unions Sue Trump Administration Over Cuts to Key Labor Relations Agency” (press release), April 15, 2025.

Bronfenbrenner, Kate. 2022. “In Solidarity: Removing Barriers to Organizing.” Testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor, Washington, D.C., September 14, 2022.

Department of Labor (DOL). n.d. “Facilitating First Contracts Between Newly-Unionized Workers and Their Employers” (fact sheet). n.d.

Department of Labor (DOL). 2024. “Acting Secretary Su Visits Georgia for Blue Bird Corp. First Contract Signing; Spotlights Biden-Harris Administration’s Support for Unions in the South” (press release). July 19, 2024. 

Eidelson, Josh. 2025. “U.S. Agency to Cease Facilitating Easier Unionization Process.” Bloomberg, March 5, 2025.

Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS). 2022a. “FMCS Card Check Services” (fact sheet), April 2022.

Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS). 2022b. “FMCS Offers No-Cost Card Check Services” (press release), April 26, 2022.

Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS). 2025a. “A Strategic Investment and Vital Part of America’s Economic Future” (fact sheet), March 2025.

Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS). 2025b. “Fiscal Year 2026 Technical Supplement.” June 2025.

Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS). 2026a. “Our Service Areas” (web page). Accessed on February 23, 2026.

Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS). 2026b. “Success Stories” (web page). Accessed on February 23, 2026.

Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS). 2026c. “Initial Contracts” (web page). Accessed on February 23, 2026.

McFerran, Lauren and Celine McNicholas. 2025. Trump’s Assault on Independent Agencies Endangers Us All. Economic Policy Institute, October 22, 2025.

National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). 2022. “NLRB General Counsel Promotes Productive Collective Bargaining Through Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service Partnership” (press release), April 27, 2022.

Purifoy, Parker. 2025. “States Take on Mediation Burdens After Trump Cuts Labor Agency.” Bloomberg Law, June 2, 2025.

Rhinehart, Lynn. 2025. “Donald Trump Is Shuttering A Little-Known Labor-Management Agency that Supports Collective Bargaining.” The Nation, March 28, 2025.

White House Task Force on Organizing and Empowerment (WH Task Force). 2023. “Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment.” March 20, 2023.

The same is true of government. If we want a high-functioning public sector—and we should—there is no shortcut. It requires sustained investment in the people and capacity that make government work. Starve it of resources, and its performance will inevitably suffer.

In a recent New York Times essay, academics Nicholas Bagley and Robert Gordon argue otherwise. In their telling, government underperforms because public-sector unions have too much power, driving up costs and resisting efficiencies. Their solution is simple: rein in unions and invest less—largely by cutting pay for public-sector workers. It’s a tidy story that promises an easy fix.

It is also economically incoherent.

The central constraint on public-sector performance is not the power of unions—it is chronic underinvestment. For decades, policymakers have allowed public-sector pay and prestige to fall behind comparable private-sector jobs and have outsourced key functions that should have been performed by skilled civil servants, not profit-maximizing private contractors that are the real source of excess costs for state and local governments. The predictable results have been staffing shortages, uneven service quality, and degraded state capacity—not because we are paying too much, but because we have been trying to get government on the cheap.

Start with the most basic implicit claim Bagley and Gordon return to again and again: that public-sector unions have extracted excessive compensation and resisted efficiencies at every turn. If that were true, we would expect to see the total compensation of public-sector workers rising as a share of the overall economy. In fact, the opposite has happened—the combined compensation of public employees has shrunk noticeably as a share of national income for the last quarter century.

To be sure, policymakers should always aim to deliver value for taxpayers. And—just as in the private sector—there are surely instances where some public employee’s pay is out of line or workers resist useful improvements. But if overpayment for services delivered inefficiently was a general feature of the public sector, their aggregate compensation wouldn’t be shrinking sharply over time.

Bagley and Gordon support their claims with a shotgun blast of anecdotes about public-sector unions able to muscle excess pay out of colluding Democratic politicians that are almost laughably context-free. L.A. Mayor Karen Bass gave larger-than-normal raises to public-sector employees in 2024? I’d hope so—prices had risen 23% in the previous five years (this inflation had made some news) and private-sector pay for non-supervisory employees was up 28% over that time. The suggestion by Bagley and Gordon that these raises were untoward only makes sense if you actively want the desirability of public employment to crater relative to the rest of the economy.

Bagley and Gordon also note darkly that “more than half” of local government expenditures are paid to employees. So what? Local government spending is not like federal government spending where the overwhelming majority of it is simple transfer payments—sending checks to people (Social Security) and medical providers (Medicare and Medicaid). Local governments must directly deliver public goods and services, like public education. That’s going to be done by people who need to be paid. The private sector, too, devotes the majority of its spending to labor (in the corporate sector, labor’s share is well over 70%.)

Even the data they cite for this irrelevant point show that compensation—including the benefits that Bagley and Gordon decry—in state and local jobs is lower than for similar workers in the private sector. That gap matters. Public-sector employers must compete in the same labor markets as everyone else, and low relative pay for skilled workers in the public sector compromises the ability of public-sector employers to attract and retain highly effective workers.

This ignorance of how labor markets in the private and public sectors interact is the root of many of Bagley and Gordon’s economic misunderstandings.

Consider their discussion of education spending, where they note that California spends more per pupil than Mississippi. California does spend more per pupil in nominal dollars, but prices in California are far higher than in Mississippi. Even more importantly, private-sector salaries for college-educated professionals in California are much higher than in Mississippi—and those are the jobs that set the outside options that talented college graduates weigh when deciding whether to enter and remain in teaching. Put another way, it is competition from the private sector that determines how high pay must be to attract and retain high-quality teachers. Education researchers know this, and that’s why the generally accepted way to assess the sufficiency of education spending is not nominal dollars spent per pupil, but per pupil spending scaled to per capita GDP in a state. In forthcoming work we show that on this measure, California ranks 36^th in the nation—lower than Mississippi.

This also shows why the Bagley and Gordon claim that “…blue states and cities often also pay state and local government workers more than similar jobs pay in red jurisdictions, even after adjusting for the cost of living” misses the point so spectacularly. State and local governments are embedded in their local economies and public-sector pay has to rise in line with private-sector pay in the economy around them, or the quality and quantity of available public employees will suffer.

The big problem over recent decades is that public-sector pay has not kept pace with the surrounding economy, which has made it harder to recruit and retain qualified workers. Teacher shortages, for instance, stem directly from the huge gap that has emerged in recent decades between what public school teachers earn and what comparable private sector workers earn, even in the highest-spending states. How would making these jobs lower-paying and lower-prestige add excellent new teachers and improve educational outcomes?

Another common complaint about the public sector is that it slows infrastructure projects. The public is often invited to imagine huge teams of paper-pushing bureaucrats gleefully stamping “no” on planning documents. But the clearest finding in empirical research about the drivers of higher-cost infrastructure is that costs have risen fastest where states reduced the number of transportation department employees. Fewer public-sector workers means that more of the planning work has been outsourced to more expensive private consultants.

Bagley and Gordon claim that when policymakers bargain with public-sector unions, there is no constraint on their incentives to grant union demands in exchange for electoral support. In reality, there is a crushing countervailing constraint—the overwhelming perception that voters are rabidly anti-tax. This results in a deep reluctance by policymakers to call for the level of revenue needed for public sector excellence. It is a far bigger structural problem today than any supposed excess power of public-sector unions.

Public-sector workers don’t just bear the brunt of underinvestment, they are also one of the few consistent voices arguing for robust financing of state and local governments, bargaining directly for the public good. They advocate for libraries to remain open in rural communities so that everybody has at least some access to the internet, for higher levels of K–12 education spending, and for proper training for EMTs and other first responders to ensure public safety.

Despite these efforts, public sector financing has been throttled in recent decades, and the results have been a predictable degradation of services. Even worse is coming, as the Republican tax and spending megabill will impose crushing cuts to safety net programs that states administer and jointly fund.

For decades we have been relying on the admirable intrinsic motivation of public employees to shield us from some of the damage of underinvestment—nurses, first-responders, and teachers going above and beyond the strict demands of their jobs to provide services they feel called to perform. But we’ve already asked too much while paying too little. If we want a truly excellent public sector—and we should—we need to pay for it.

Figure A

Most major work stoppages in 2025 (17) took place in the public sector. Six involved workers at public colleges and universities, including a five-day strike involving 1,400 custodial, maintenance, and services workers at the University of Minnesota where the Teamsters secured higher wage increases and other concessions. Public administration had five major work stoppages and the health care sector had four major work stoppages.

Thirteen major work stoppages took place in the private sector. Seven involved health care workers, including a historic 46-day strike involving 5,000 nurses at Providence Hospitals where the Oregon Nurses Association secured substantial wage increases, better staffing plans for patient care, and guaranteed pay for missed breaks or meals. Manufacturing and retail trade had two major work stoppages each.

Major work stoppages took place in 15 states across the U.S. in 2025. The five states with the most stoppages were California (18), Washington (3), Colorado (2), Illinois (2), and Oregon (2). Some strikes took place across state lines: For example, the five-month strike involving 3,200 Boeing machinists occurred in both Missouri and Illinois where the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers secured a 24% general wage increase during the length of the contract.  

As noted above, there are limitations to the BLS data, which only include information on work stoppages (both strikes and lockouts) involving 1,000 or more workers and lasting one full work shift between Monday–Friday, excluding federal holidays. For example, the 2025 data did not capture a four-day strike involving 580 hockey players and the East Coast Hockey League because it didn’t meet the size limitations.

Given that a majority (58%) of private-sector workers are employed by firms with fewer than 1,000 employees, these size and duration limits mean that BLS is not capturing many workers who walked off the job in 2025. While BLS shows 30 major work stoppages in 2025, Cornell’s Labor Action Tracker reports 303 work stoppages—298 strikes and 5 lockouts.

Policymakers should strengthen workers’ right to strike

Strikes are a powerful tool that workers can use to rectify the imbalance of bargaining power in the labor market. At a time when affordability and rising income inequality are at the front of workers’ minds, strikes can provide critical leverage to win wage gains, maintain and expand benefits, and improve working conditions. The National Labor Relations Act provides most private-sector workers, whether they are in a union or not, the right to strike. However, bad National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Supreme Court decisions have eroded this right over time. For example, in NLRB v. Mackay Radio & Telegraph Co., the Supreme Court ruled that employers can legally hire permanent replacements for striking workers in some cases.

There is no federal law that gives public-sector workers the right to strike, but a dozen states have extended this right to some state and local government workers. Even with these limitations, thousands of workers across the country and across sectors went on strike to demand fair pay and improved working conditions.

Policymakers—on the federal and state level—should pass laws that strengthen workers’ right to strike. Congress should pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which strengthens private-sector workers’ right to strike by eliminating the prohibition on secondary strikes, allowing the use of intermittent strikes, and prohibiting employers from permanently replacing striking workers. Congress should also pass the Striking and Locked Out Workers Healthcare Protection Act, which would prevent employers from cutting off workers’ health care as a form of retaliation, and the Food Secure Strikers Act, which would allow striking workers to qualify for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.

State lawmakers should extend full collective bargaining rights, including the right to strike, to all public-sector workers. State lawmakers should also join New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Washington state in making striking workers eligible for unemployment insurance benefits.

What the 2025 unionization data show

The number of workers represented by a union increased by 463,000 to 16.5 million in 2025, the highest level recorded in 16 years. These unionized workers account for 11.2% of all wage and salary workers, bringing union density back to its 2023 rate. The fact that union density is at its highest since just 2023, while the total number of union-represented workers is at its highest since 2009, reflects growth in overall employment—the denominator of the rate—over this period. When assessing trends in unionization, it is useful to examine changes in both rates and levels; rate changes capture shifts in the share of workers who are unionized, while level changes capture the net amount of successful new organizing (recalling that when new businesses open, they do not automatically adopt the unionization rate of existing firms; they must be organized, a process that requires substantial time and effort).

As a result of the government shutdown in 2025 from October 1 to November 12, the survey the union membership data are based on—the Current Population Survey (CPS)—was not conducted in October, and the 2025 figures therefore reflect an average of the remaining 11 months. To assess the impact of the missing month on reported changes in unionization, we recalculated 2024 estimates excluding October to ensure an apples-to-apples comparison between 2024 and 2025. The results indicate that the absence of October data in 2025 did not greatly affect the key findings: Union representation increased by 439,000 in this exercise—compared with 463,000 as published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)—and union density rose by 0.1 percentage points, identical to the published change. Nonetheless, the loss of a month of CPS data—something that has never occurred in the history of the survey—represents a serious and preventable degradation of the nation’s labor market statistics, reducing their precision, even where headline estimates appear relatively unaffected.

The overall union density of 11.2% masks large differences in unionization by sector. Unionization is far more prevalent in the public sector than the private sector: In 2025, 36.4% of public-sector workers were covered by a union contract, compared with 6.8% of private-sector workers. Both the public and the private sectors saw increases in unionization in 2025.

The public sector saw a 0.7 percentage-point increase in union density in 2025, rising from 35.7% to 36.4%. This growth reflected an increase of 236,000 unionized workers. The most notable development in public-sector unionization in 2025 occurred among federal government workers. Despite—and likely because of—the Trump administration’s aggressive attacks on federal employees and their unions, federal workers increasingly turned to collective representation. Union density among federal workers rose from 29.9% to 31.1%, the largest single-year increase since 2011. This increase represented a gain of 40,000 unionized workers—notable given that federal government employment fell as the Trump administration slashed federal jobs.

Unionization among state and local government workers also rose—from 37.1% to 37.6%, reflecting an increase of 196,000 unionized workers.

Private-sector union coverage increased by 227,000 in 2025, pushing the unionization rate up from 6.7% to 6.8%. Within the private sector, there were particularly large gains in health care and social assistance, retail trade, and educational services. In contrast, the traditionally blue-collar industries of mining, manufacturing, and transportation and utilities saw declines. Construction was one heavily blue-collar sector to buck this trend, posting substantial gains in union coverage.

The BLS unionization numbers serve as a timely reminder that the conventional notion of unionized workers as predominantly white men is woefully outdated. As of 2025, roughly a third (32%) of unionized workers are white non-Hispanic men, while roughly two-thirds (68%) are people of color and/or women.2 These shares were unchanged from 2024.

The gender gap in unionization is very small—less than 1 percentage point. However, the gap widened somewhat in 2025, as the unionization rate for men rose more than that for women: Men’s unionization increased from 11.3% to 11.6%, while women’s increased more modestly, from 10.8% to 10.9%.

Of all major racial and ethnic groups, Black workers continued to have the highest unionization rates in 2025, at 12.7%. This compares with unionization rates of 11.0% for white workers, 10.4% for Asian workers, and 9.9% for Hispanic workers. Despite maintaining the highest density, Black workers experienced a decline in 2025, dropping from 13.2% to 12.7%. This decline reflected decreases among both Black men and Black women, though the underlying dynamics differed by gender. The losses were larger among Black women, and the decline among Black women in the level of union coverage was likely due, at least in part, to falling employment in 2025—a pattern not observed among Black men, whose employment rose. The drop in Black women’s employment in 2025 has been documented in recent analyses (see Wilson 2026). 

Even with the decline in unionization among Black workers, unionization among people of color overall increased more (up 289,000) than among white non-Hispanic workers (up 174,000).3 This was driven by sizeable increases in unionization among both Hispanic and Asian workers.

Although younger workers tend to have lower unionization rates, the 2025 data reflect the heightened organizing activity among younger workers in recent years. Union coverage among workers under age 45 increased by 428,000, compared with an increase of 35,000 among workers age 45 and over.

Overall unionization rates obscure large differences across the country. States in the Northeast and the West tend to have higher unionization rates—particularly New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut in the Northeast, and Hawaii, Washington, Alaska, California, and Oregon in the West. By contrast, states in the South tend to have lower unionization rates, notably the Carolinas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Georgia, and Texas. States in the Midwest tend to have unionization rates that fall somewhere in between.4

In 2025, however, this long-standing pattern showed potential signs of erosion, as the South accounted for close to half (46%) of all net gains nationwide. The region added 214,000 unionized workers, compared with 249,000 in the rest of the country combined.

More than 50 million workers wanted a union but couldn’t get one

The share of nonunion workers who would like to have a union at their workplace far exceeds the share who are actually unionized. In 2025, 11.2% of workers were covered by a union contract. Recent survey data show that 43% of nonunion workers would vote to unionize their workplace if given the opportunity.5 That is up substantially from previous decades; surveys in 1977 and 1994 found that fewer than one-third (27% and 31%, respectively) of nonunion workers said they would vote to unionize if they could.6 There were 130.2 million wage and salary workers in 2025 who were not represented by a union; 43% of that is 56 million. In other words, more than 50 million workers in 2025 wanted union representation but were unable to get it.

Unions have record high public favorability in U.S.

The 2025 rise in union density coincides with a high public favorability toward unions. Since 2021, approval for unions has remained high, with over 68% of people in the U.S. viewing unions favorably (Brenan 2025). This positive view of unions is shared across generations, with majorities of Boomers (59%), Gen X (58%), Millennials (61%), and Gen Z (63%) viewing unions favorably. Young adults (ages 18–35) have the highest favorability rate at 72% (Glass 2025). Unions are viewed positively across party lines with Democrats (90%) and Independents (69%) having high favorability rates for unions, and over 40% of Republicans approving of labor unions (Brenan 2025). Some conservative organizations recognize that unions are popular among workers: Research by American Compass finds that at least 46% of Republicans view unions somewhat favorably, with favorability increasing among young Republicans (60%) (American Compass 2025). Data from the American National Election Studies show that people in the U.S. favor unions over big business now more than ever—with the average rating for labor unions hitting a new high (60%), while big business hit a low (44%) (Sojourner and Reich 2025). Further, most people in the U.S. say the decline in union density is bad for the country (60%) and bad for working people (62%). Most young adults (69%), including young Republicans (52%) and young Democrats (82%), view the decline in union density as bad for working people (Van Green 2025).

Benefits of unions

The high favorability of unions in the U.S. makes sense when you consider the benefits unions provide for workers. When workers join together in a union and engage in collective bargaining, their wages, benefits, and working conditions improve. Further, in communities with higher union density rates, working families have higher incomes, greater access to health care, and fewer restrictions on voting. Unions:

• Boost wages. On average, a worker covered by a union contract earns 12.8% more in wages than a peer in a nonunionized workplace (EPI 2025b). Further, in places or industries where unionization is strong, unions also boost wages for nonunion workers by effectively establishing higher standards. This is the union “spillover” effect.

• Narrow racial wage gaps and raise women’s wages. On average, Hispanic and Black workers represented by a union are paid 16.4% and 12.6% more, respectively, than their nonunionized Hispanic and Black peers (EPI 2025c). The wages of women represented by a union are 9.8% higher than those of nonunionized women (EPI 2025d).
• Create healthier and safer workplaces. Unions also improve the health and safety of workplaces by providing health insurance and paid sick time, requiring safety equipment, and empowering workers to report unsafe conditions without fear of retaliation (McNicholas et al. 2025).
• Increase retirement security. More than 9 in 10 unionized workers have access to employer-sponsored retirement plans. Further, union employers are more likely to contribute more toward retirement plans than comparable nonunion employers (McNicholas et al. 2025; BLS 2025).

In the same way that unions give workers a voice at their workplace, the data suggest that unions also give workers a voice in shaping their communities. Research by EPI documents a strong correlation between high-union-density states and a range of measures that promote higher incomes, healthier communities, and a stronger democracy (McNicholas et al. 2025), as reflected in:

• Higher minimum wages. The average minimum wage of high-union-density states is $13.70, compared with low-union-density states’ average minimum wage of $9.30.
• Higher incomes. Median household incomes in high-union-density states are more than $12,000 higher, on average, than median incomes in low-union-density states.
• More spending on education. States with higher rates of unionization spend $22,777 per pupil on education, compared with $15,568 per pupil in low-union-density states. Further, states with higher unionization rates are less likely to have universal voucher programs.
• Greater access to paid sick leave. 70.6% of states with the highest union density have enacted paid sick leave legislation, compared with just 11.8% of low-union-density states.
• Fewer voting restriction laws. Since 2021, low-union-density states have passed 44 voter restriction laws, whereas high-union-density states passed six such laws.
• Stronger protections for reproductive freedom. States with abortion protections have an average union density twice as high as that of states with varying degrees of abortion restrictions and bans (Poydock 2025).

It is clear that unions provide workers with direct benefits. Further, there is an undeniable correlation between higher levels of unionization and stronger economic, community, and democratic outcomes. While these benefits have long been evident, increased recognition of unions’ role in creating a more just economy and society has undoubtedly contributed to the increase in unionization in 2025. Beyond this, unions have provided representation and support to workers targeted and retaliated against by the Trump administration.

Unions are fighting against attacks from the Trump administration

The growth in unionization in 2025 occurred despite President Trump’s relentless attacks on workers and their unions. Since returning to office, President Trump has engaged in a consistent campaign against U.S. workers, making their lives less affordable in the process. From stripping federal workers’ collective bargaining rights to canceling federal collective bargaining agreements, and compromising the independence of the sole federal agency that administers and enforces private-sector workers’ union and collective bargaining rights, Trump has made it known that he prioritizes the interests of employers over working people.

Unions have consistently been a counterforce against Trump’s attacks on workers. When the Trump administration began indiscriminately firing federal workers without cause, unions sued the administration over its efforts to downsize the federal government. Since then, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that the Office of Personnel Management wrongfully directed federal agencies to fire thousands of probationary employees (Heckman 2025). Unions have also helped win reinstatement for thousands of federal workers. In January 2026, nearly 1,000 workers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, where over 90% of the workforce received layoff notices, were fully reinstated by the Department of Health and Human Services after months of pressure from unions, public health experts, and worker advocates (AFGE 2026).

In addition to legal fights, unions have been key mobilizers in helping pass legislation that reverses harms from the Trump administration. In response to Trump’s executive order that stripped the collective bargaining rights from over 1 million federal workers, unions have shepherded the Protect America’s Workforce Act to reverse the executive order. In December 2025, the bill passed the House with bipartisan support and has moved to the Senate, where it is currently awaiting consideration (AFL-CIO 2025).

Further, as President Trump actively makes life less affordable for workers, unions are winning contracts that are raising workers’ pay. In Georgia, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers secured a four-year contract for John Deere workers that included general wage increases of at least 2% each year of the contract, a $3,000 ratification bonus, and no increases to insurance premiums during the length of the contract (IAM Union 2025). In Illinois, the Committee of Interns and Residents/SEIU Healthcare won a first contract for 1,000 resident physicians and fellows at the University of Chicago that included a 17% wage increase through the length of the contract (Moreno 2025). The News Guild of New York won a first contract for journalists at the New York Daily News that included salary minimums of $60,000 and additional wage increases of 6% during the first six months of the contract (The NewsGuild of New York 2025). These are just a few of the many examples of unions raising workers’ pay in 2025. In contrast, the Trump administration has put forward an economic agenda that has undermined workers’ wages and eroded their economic security (McNicholas, Poydock, and Bivens 2026).

Policy pathways to help workers win unions

The 2025 rise in unionization shows that workers are winning unions despite legal and political systems largely working against them. The increase is a testament to workers’ desire to have greater agency over their working lives and a more effective voice in shaping the policies that impact their families and communities. Policymakers have long failed to reform federal labor law to deliver the promise of union representation and collective bargaining first guaranteed U.S. workers nearly 100 years ago. This failure has left workers more vulnerable to attacks, as demonstrated by President Trump’s union-busting policy agenda. Still, workers are organizing their workplaces and winning contracts. If nothing else, policymakers should not allow for the passage of bad policies that make it harder for workers to win unions. But if policymakers want to deliver a pro-worker agenda that would help workers organize and collectively bargain, they should enact the following policies:

• Restore collective bargaining rights for federal workers. The Senate should pass the bipartisan Protect America’s Workforce Act, which would repeal President Trump’s executive order that stripped collective bargaining rights for more than 1 million federal workers. President Trump could also rescind his executive orders that stripped federal workers of their collective bargaining rights.
• Pass the Protecting the Right to Organize Act and the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act. These bipartisan bills would strengthen private-sector and public-sector workers’ rights to organize and collectively bargain.
• Ensure workers can reach a first contract. Congress should pass legislation that encourages unions and employers to reach a first contract in a timely manner. The National Labor Relations Act requires unions and management to bargain in good faith but does not require that the two sides reach an agreement. As a result, most unions fail to reach a first contract within a year of unionizing. The bipartisan Faster Labor Contracts Act would establish a mediation-and-binding-arbitration process when employers refuse to bargain in good faith.

Further, states have the opportunity to maintain—and even expand—workers’ rights and protections President Trump and Congressional Republicans are trying to roll back. They can:

• Expand collective bargaining rights to public sector, domestic workers, agricultural workers, and app-based/gig workers.
• Eliminate so-called right-to-work (RTW) laws. Twenty-six states currently have anti-union so-called RTW laws, which diminish workers’ collective power by prohibiting unions and employers from negotiating union security clauses into collective bargaining agreements. This makes it harder for workers to join, form, and sustain unions. More states should restore private-sector workers’ full bargaining rights by repealing these anti-union state laws, as Michigan did in 2023.
• Protect workers’ right to opt out of captive audience meetings. Fourteen states have passed legislation that prohibits employers from mandating worker attendance at meetings focused on political or religious matters. This includes mandatory anti-union captive audience meetings, which the National Labor Relations Board ruled were a violation of the National Labor Relations Act in 2024. However, the current NLRB General Counsel has previously voiced opposition toward the 2024 NLRB decision, which makes state action more necessary.

Notes

1. In states without so-called “right to work” laws, private sector workers at unionized workplaces who are not union members may be required to pay “fair share” fees to cover the cost of representation, but they cannot be required to become union members or pay full dues.

2. The figures in this sentence are the authors’ own calculations based on Current Population Survey microdata (EPI 2025a). We rely on our own calculations here in order to construct nonoverlapping race and ethnicity categories. BLS’s published race and ethnicity categories overlap—for example, white Hispanic workers are counted as both white and Hispanic—and therefore do not permit the desired breakdown. Unless specifically noted, all other figures cited in this report are derived from BLS’s published calculations. 

3. The figures in this sentence are the authors’ own calculations based on Current Population Survey microdata (EPI 2025a). We rely on our own calculations here in order to construct nonoverlapping race and ethnicity categories. BLS’s published race and ethnicity categories overlap—for example, white Hispanic workers are counted as both white and Hispanic—and therefore do not permit the desired breakdown. Unless specifically noted, all other figures cited in this report are derived from BLS’s published calculations.

4. Note: We use the U.S. Census Bureau’s Census Regions.

5. This number can be found in Figure B of Ahlquist, Grumbach, and Kochan 2024. It was calculated from the survey data discussed in Diaz-Linhart et al. 2023.

6. Figure B of Ahlquist, Grumbach, and Kochan 2024. 

References

AFL-CIO. 2025. “Labor Movement Delivers Bipartisan Victory as House Passes Bill to Restore Federal Workers’ Union Rights” (press release). December 11, 2025.

Ahlquist, John S., Jake Grumbach, and Thomas Kochan. 2024. The Rise of the ‘Union Curious’: Support for Unionization Among America’s Frontline Workers. Economic Policy Institute, July 2024.

American Compass. 2025. PRO-Tip: Only Some Labor Reforms Are Pro-Worker. May 1, 2025.

American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE). 2026. “Major Union Victory–NIOSH Employees Win Full Reinstatement After Nine-Month Fight” (press release). January 14, 2026.

Brenan, Megan. 2025. “Labor Union Approval Relatively Steady at 68% in U.S.” Gallup, August 28, 2025.

Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). 2025. “Table 1. Retirement benefits: Access, participation, and take-up rates, March 2025.” Employee Benefits in the United States. Last modified September 25, 2025.

Diaz-Linhart, Yaminette, Arrow Minster, Dongwoo Park, Duanyi Yang, and Thomas Kochan. 2023. “Bridging the Gap: Measuring the Impact of Worker Voice on Job-Related Outcomes.” MIT Working Paper.

Economic Policy Institute. 2025a. Current Population Survey Extracts, Version 2025.1.6, https://microdata.epi.org.

Economic Policy Institute (EPI). 2025b, State of Working America Data Library, “Union Wage Premium – Union Wage Premium, Average (Regression-Based),” 2025. 

Economic Policy Institute (EPI). 2025c, State of Working America Data Library, “Union Wage Premium by Race/Ethnicity – Union Wage Premium, Average (Regression-Based),” 2025. 

Economic Policy Institute (EPI). 2025d, State of Working America Data Library, “Union Wage Premium by Gender – Union Wage Premium, Average (Regression-Based),” 2025. 

Glass, Aurelia. 2025. “Everybody Likes Unions.” Center for American Progress, November 4, 2025.

Heckman, Jory. 2025. “Court Finds OPM Unlawfully Directed Mass Firings, Tells Agencies to Update Personnel Files.” Federal News Network, September 13, 2025.

IAM Union. 2025. “Big Win at John Deere: Georgia Local 2789 Members Ratify Strong New Contract” (press release). November 18, 2025.

McNicholas, Celine, Margaret Poydock, Heidi Shierholz, and Hilary Wething. 2025. Unions Aren’t Just Good For Workers—They Also Benefit Communities And Democracy. Economic Policy Institute, August 2025.

McNicholas, Celine, Margaret Poydock, and Josh Bivens. 2026. 47 Ways Trump Has Made Life Less Affordable in the Last Year. Economic Policy Institute, January 2026.

Moreno, Julian. 2025. “UChicago Medicine Resident Physicians Pass First-Ever Union Contract.” The Chicago Maroon, November 11, 2025.

The NewsGuild of New York. 2025. “The NewsGuild of New York Reaches Tentative First Contract Agreement with Alden Global Capital for Journalists at the Daily News.” Editor and Publisher, November 10, 2025.

Poydock, Margaret. 2025. “Unions Can Play A Critical Role In Safeguarding Reproductive Freedom.” Working Economics Blog (Economic Policy Institute), August 25, 2025.

Sojourner, Aaron, and Adam Reich. 2025. “Americans Favor Labor Unions Over Big Business Now More Than Ever.” Working Economics Blog (Economic Policy Institute), May 20, 2025.

Van Green, Ted. 2025. “Majorities of Adults See Decline of Union Membership as Bad for the U.S. and Working People.” Pew Research Center, August 27, 2025.

Wilson, Valerie. 2026. “Black Women Suffered Large Employment Losses in 2025—Particularly Among College Graduates and Public-Sector Workers.” Working Economics Blog (Economic Policy Institute), February 10, 2026.