Decades of underinvestment, coupled with attacks on unions and other labor supports, have left workers without an adequate safety net. Any effective approach to fixing the UI system must be comprehensive and should apply regardless of whether a worker is displaced due to AI. The brief recommends a range of steps that federal policymakers should take, including: 

• Boosting unemployment benefits. The percentage of wages that UI replaces for workers has declined over time and has not kept pace with inflation. In 2025, national average UI benefits replaced well under half of national average wages. UI benefits should be designed to ensure that workers can afford housing, food, and other essentials during their period of joblessness.
• Standardizing benefits across states. Benefit amounts and the duration of benefits vary across states. In Arizona and Florida, for example, UI benefits replace less than 15% of average weekly wages. Policymakers should ensure benefit amounts are consistent across states and require states to provide at least 26 weeks of benefits. 
• Expanding eligibility to receive benefits. UI should cover a broader range of workers, including part-time workers, independent contractors, job seekers who have not been recently employed, and seasonal and temporary workers.

The brief also weighs the merits and pitfalls of establishing a stand-alone unemployment program solely focused on AI. These considerations include program design, stakeholder roles, eligibility criteria challenges, the resources needed to be effective, and vulnerability to reauthorization hurdles in Congress. 

“Losing a job for any reason or length of time is traumatic and damaging, in large part because workers lack an adequate safety net to smooth those transitions. If policymakers are serious about easing the impact of AI-related job transitions for workers, they should strengthen the safety net for workers in any scenario,” said Mary Beech, fellow at Workshop and author of the policy brief.

The brief is the first in a series outlining a pro-worker AI policy playbook. Future policy briefs will focus on how collective bargaining, strong labor markets, worker privacy protections, and more can help address concerns about protecting and empowering workers during technological change. These briefs are part of a joint project in which EPI, the AFL-CIO Tech Institute, We Build Progress, and Workshop explore comprehensive federal policy frameworks around AI and workers.

Each state fact sheet includes the following data, where available:

Economic contributions of immigrants: The fact sheets highlight the central role that immigrant workers play in state economies. This includes:

• The percentage of jobs that are filled by immigrant workers
• Immigrant workers’ contribution to economic output
• The industries and occupations with the highest share of immigrant workers
• The share of immigrants who are entrepreneurs and business owners

Cost of mass deportations: Increased immigration enforcement harms everyone in the labor market—immigrants and U.S.-born workers alike. The fact sheets document job losses already linked to immigration enforcement surges since 2025, and estimate what would happen if the Trump administration meets its deportation targets, including:

• Lost tax revenue in each state
• Total jobs lost in each state, including construction jobs and losses for U.S.-born workers

Immigrants with status protections are under threat: The fact sheets show how many workers in each state hold temporary protection from deportation—including Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and DACA—that are now at risk from Trump administration attacks. Losing these protections would jeopardize these workers’ ability to live and work lawfully in the U.S., destabilizing families and the workforce.

The benefits of creating a pathway to citizenship: In contrast to deportations that lead to job losses, providing citizenship would stabilize and strengthen the state’s workforce and economy. The fact sheets estimate how many people in each state would directly benefit from a path to citizenship, and the annual wage gain that would result.

“Across every state, the data tell the same story: Immigrant workers are integral to state economies and help drive economic growth, mass deportations kill jobs, and a path to citizenship would boost wages and strengthen the economy for all working people,” said Daniel Costa, EPI’s director of immigration law and policy research.

The report is accompanied by an FAQ that answers common questions about the economic impacts of RTW laws and their racist, anti-union origins dating back to the 1940s. Despite their name, RTW laws provide no job protections or job rights—instead, they weaken unions’ ability to negotiate fair contracts and represent workers effectively. Unionization rates are clearly lower in the 26 states with RTW laws—and since unions raise wages for all workers, that suppression lowers pay and benefits for all workers.   

States with RTW laws are also more likely to have other anti-worker laws and generally weaker labor standards, according to the report. This is likely because both RTW and other anti-worker policies stem from the same anti-worker political roots, and because RTW’s suppression of unions deprives these states of strong potential political champions—organized labor—for other pro-worker policies.   

By contrast, non-RTW states are more likely to have pro-worker policies like higher minimum wages and prevailing wage laws, restrictions on noncompete agreements, pay transparency policies, and more protective unemployment insurance benefits. 

The analysis suggests that repealing anti-union RTW laws and enabling workers to increase unionization levels are key to raising wages. 

“The evidence is clear: wages are lower in ‘right-to-work’ states. Despite the misleading label, ‘right-to-work’ laws don’t boost job growth but do make it harder for workers to form and sustain strong unions. States with ‘right-to-work’ laws have lower unionization rates and more anti-worker policies,” said EPI senior economist Elise Gould.  

“Unions are extremely popular today, and a recent survey suggests 56 million workers would join a union tomorrow if they could. Yet many can’t get one because of weak federal labor law and the spread of state anti-union ‘right-to-work’ laws. It’s critical that lawmakers restore workers’ collective bargaining power by removing ‘right-to-work’ laws and other obstacles to unionization,” said Jennifer Sherer, deputy director of EPI’s Economic Analysis and Research Network. 

The relative teacher pay penalty—which is adjusted for education, experience, and demographic characteristics—was a slight improvement from 2024’s record high of 26.9%, but still more than four times the 6.1% penalty recorded in 1996. In other words, teachers earned on average 74.8 cents on the dollar in 2025 compared with other college graduates—much less than the relative 93.9 cents on the dollar that teachers earned in 1996. When broken down by gender, the relative teacher pay penalty was 34.5% for men and 20.0% for women.

Overall, simple inflation-adjusted weekly wages for public school teachers fell 6.2% over the last three decades, while wages for other college graduates rose 28.8% over the same period. 

Teachers were paid less than other college graduates in every state, with relative teacher pay gaps ranging from 10.4% in Rhode Island to 40.7% in Colorado. The teacher pay penalty was at least 25% in 25 states.

While teachers typically receive better benefits packages than other professionals, this only partially offsets the growing wage penalty that teachers face. After accounting for the difference in benefits, teachers’ total compensation penalty was 14.5% in 2025. 

As the report explains, providing teachers with competitive pay is necessary to retain and attract qualified workers. While there are many important factors impacting teacher retention and recruitment, pay consistently lands near the top of any list. 

Reversing these trends will require targeted, sustained investment in public education at the local, state, and federal levels. It will also require stronger support for public-sector collective bargaining, which has long been a driver of better pay and job quality for teachers.

“The decades-long teacher pay penalty has taken a heavy toll on public education. Yet, policymakers have failed to make the needed investments to reverse course. That failure is especially troubling in a country as wealthy as the United States, with more than enough resources for its public schools to be the envy of the world,” said report author Sylvia Allegretto, who is a senior economist at CEPR and research associate at EPI.

The Trump administration and its allies in Congress have cut support for basic needs programs and diverted huge sums of money to deportations. The federal government plans to spend $268.9 billion—or $2,358 per taxpayer—to undertake mass deportations throughout the second Trump administration, according to the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. With the money being spent on mass deportations, the calculator shows that the U.S. could instead fund one of the following options for the remainder of Trump’s term:

• More than 925,000 school teachers
• Over 5 million veterans’ medical care
• Nearly 12 million people on Medicaid
• 9.7 million public housing units
• Paid parental leave for 6.2 million parents

At the state level, for example, $4.4 billion in federal taxpayer dollars is being spent on mass deportations in Minnesota, a prominent target of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement crackdown earlier this year. With the money being spent on mass deportations, Minnesota could instead fund one of the following options, for instance: 

• More than 11,000 registered nurses
• Over 100,000 children in Head Start programs
• 130,000 people on Medicaid

“The Trump administration’s immigration policy is not just inhumane, it is also a huge waste of public resources. Every dollar spent on mass deportations is a dollar not spent on critical investments like education, health care, and affordable housing,” said Heidi Shierholz, president at EPI. 

“Families across the country are struggling to afford housing, health care, and education. Instead of addressing these real problems, the Trump administration is taking billions of taxpayer dollars to pay for sweeping raids and mass deportations of people who pose no threat. The government needs to get its priorities straight and focus on what really matters,” said Gordon Lafer, professor at the University of Oregon’s Labor Education and Research Center and research associate at EPI.

The report estimates that tripling union membership would:  

• Deliver a 14.5% raise for the median worker—amounting to more than $7,700 annually, or nearly $270,000 over a 35-year career. These life-changing increases would benefit union and nonunion workers alike. 

• Shift $1.2 trillion to workers annually. This would reverse one-third of the increase in inequality experienced since 1979. 

• Raise wages in every state. Annual wage increases would range from $1,900 to $10,600, according to the report’s state-by-state breakdowns.  

• Significantly narrow racial wage gaps. Because unions tend to boost wages more for Black and Hispanic workers than for white workers, tripling union membership would close racial wage gaps by more than one-third. 

• Boost the number of people with health insurance. Since unions increase other forms of compensation, like health insurance benefits, the number of nonelderly people without health insurance would fall by about 25%. 

• Strengthen communities. States with high union density invest more in public education, have higher unemployment insurance recipiency rates, and have all adopted Medicaid expansion. 

• Protect democracy. Unions boost voter turnout, equip workers with civic skills, and actively defend voting rights. States with high union density have passed far fewer voter restriction bills than low-density states. 

While tripling union membership is an ambitious goal, it is fully consistent with workers’ own demand for unions. Survey data show that tens of millions of workers would vote to unionize if given the opportunity. 

“Tripling union membership is not a nostalgic pipe dream. It is exactly what workers want, and federal and state policymakers have a clear roadmap to make it happen,” said Heidi Shierholz, president of EPI. “Collective bargaining is the most effective tool for workers to raise their wages and secure a fair share of economic growth. If policymakers are serious about tackling affordability problems, expanding union membership and collective bargaining should be at the center of their agenda.” 

Tripling union membership will require comprehensive policy reform that weaves together tested approaches with bold new ideas. The report unveils two new policy proposals designed to grow collective bargaining and union density—built to work alongside the federal labor law reform bills already on the table: the PRO Act and the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act. 

• Guaranteed annual raises for newly unionized workers. A mandatory cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) would provide a meaningful guardrail for workers whose first contract bargaining ends up in arbitration. For the typical worker, a 3% COLA means roughly $2,000 extra a year. 

• Default collective bargaining when CEO-to-worker pay ratios exceed 100:1. Declining unionization and the stratospheric rise in CEO pay are deeply connected. Strengthening the bargaining power of workers in severely imbalanced companies would enable them to capture a larger share of the wealth their work creates. 

States should also act by repealing so-called “right-to-work” laws and ensuring collective bargaining rights for all public-sector workers, which alone would increase union density nationally from 9.9% to 14.4%. Beyond removing these barriers, states can extend collective bargaining rights to other workers currently excluded from federal law and extend unemployment insurance eligibility to workers on strike, among other reforms.  

“In an economy that has been rigged against working people for decades, unions serve as a counterweight to corporate power—reducing inequality and building the kind of middle class that underpins a strong and inclusive economy,” said Robert Reich—professor, writer, and former U.S. Secretary of Labor—in the foreword of the report. “This report shines a light on what we stand to win if we rebuild union power.” 

“Across the country, working people are hurting. Rent keeps going up, paychecks aren’t stretching as far, and everything from groceries to electric bills is too expensive. But we know—and as this new report shows—that it’s better in a union. Unions change lives for workers, their families, and their communities. They’re how we rebalance our economy, shift wealth back to working people, and provide hope for a better life. And working people aren’t waiting or putting up with the broken status quo—they’re organizing and coming together to push back against union-busting bosses and anti-union politicians. The AFL-CIO and our 65 affiliated unions will never stop fighting alongside them for the future we all deserve,” said Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO.

Who:

• Liz Shuler, President, AFL-CIO

• Heidi Shierholz, President, EPI

• Moderated by Naomi Walker, Executive Vice President, EPI

When: Wednesday, July 15, at 10:00 a.m. Eastern
 

Press conference links, notes and discussion

Read online or download the pdf for The case for tripling union membership: How rebuilding union power would strengthen workers, the economy, and democracy

Afternoon conversation with the report authors Celine McNicholas, Jennifer Sherer, and Ben Zipperer, moderated by Naomi Walker—50 million workers want to join a union: What if they could?

The analysis that shows the disproportionate increase in union density in the south in 2025

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Raising the minimum wage boosts workers’ incomes without meaningfully increasing unemployment, according to the vast majority of high-quality economic research.  

Increasing the minimum wage does not meaningfully raise prices. Economists find that raising the minimum wage only slightly increases prices at affected businesses—because low-wage labor is often a small share of total business expenses and minimum wage increases can be offset through reduced profits, lower worker turnover, and higher productivity.  

The economic benefits of raising the minimum wage far exceed these price increases. For low-wage workers, the wage boost from the higher minimum wage more than compensates for increased prices of the goods and services they buy. These workers, in turn, spend more overall because of their additional income, which can boost the overall economy. 

Even in many areas with lower costs of living, the minimum wage is far too low. According to EPI’s Family Budget Calculator, there is almost no U.S. county where a single adult worker can achieve a modest but adequate standard of living earning less than $15 an hour. 

Businesses do not move in response to minimum wage increases. Businesses commonly affected by minimum wage changes (such as restaurants and retail) want to locate where there are consumers with money to spend. Because raising the minimum wage boosts the spending power of low-income households, it can strengthen the local customer base for these direct-to-consumer businesses even as it raises their labor costs. 

Boosting the minimum wage for tipped workers does not hurt the restaurant industry. Economic research on the restaurant industry finds that tipped minimum wage increases boost wages for workers without affecting employment. 

The vast majority of workers impacted by the minimum wage are not teenagers. EPI’s analysis of the 2025 Raise the Wage Act found that only 14% of the workers that would be impacted by the policy were younger than 20 years old.  

“Minimum wage increases are one of the simplest ways to raise workers’ incomes— without triggering the job losses or price increases that critics predict. The failure to adequately raise the federal minimum wage over time has left millions of workers being paid less today than they could have been earning,” said Sebastian Martinez Hickey, EPI’s state economic analyst.

A new Economic Policy Institute report proposes tying the federal minimum wage to two-thirds of the national median wage, an evidence-backed benchmark that would deliver meaningful pay increases to the largest number of workers without the job losses critics typically predict. A complementary report also released today from the Roosevelt Institute—a think tank and professional network working to balance power in the economy—provides evidence for this higher wage rate and argues that greater worker protections, including universal just-cause protections and stronger enforcement against wage theft, are foundational to families’ economic security. 

The federal minimum wage—frozen at $7.25 since 2009—is at its lowest real value in 77 years, having lost 30% of its purchasing power over the 17-year freeze, according to EPI’s report. Setting the minimum wage at two-thirds of the median—equivalent to roughly $17.70 today and a projected $20 in 2030—would lift pay for nearly 40 million workers in 2030, about a quarter of the workforce. It would also durably narrow the gap between low-wage workers and the typical worker, with Black workers and women seeing the largest benefits. Indexing the federal minimum wage to median wage growth–which typically outpaces price growth–would lock in these gains, preventing the kind of decades-long slide that has eroded the current floor.

The two-thirds benchmark is also well-supported by economic research. Decades of studies show that minimum wage increases up to two-thirds of the median wage deliver meaningful pay increases and do not result in the kind of job loss critics of a higher minimum wage predict.

EPI’s proposal would eliminate poverty wages and move the federal minimum wage meaningfully toward a living wage in much of the country. Under EPI’s Family Budget Calculator thresholds, a single adult working full time at the proposed wage could cover the expenses of a modest but adequate standard of living in half of U.S. counties, a substantial step toward economic security for tens of millions of low-wage workers.

But in higher-cost states and localities, state and local policymakers can and should set even higher minimum wages to reduce even wider gaps between pay and the cost of an adequate standard of living. And even a strong federal floor cannot, on its own, guarantee economic security: Lifting working families requires a broader agenda of strengthening unions, expanding the safety net, and keeping unemployment low.

“The woefully inadequate federal minimum wage is a major driver of the affordability crisis facing low-wage workers. Meaningfully raising the federal minimum wage and indexing it to median wage growth is the single most direct step Congress can take to lift pay for U.S. workers and their families,” said Ben Zipperer, EPI senior economist and author of the report. 

“A stronger federal minimum wage is needed to put workers within reach of a living wage,” said Patrick Oakford, director of worker power and economic security at the Roosevelt Institute. “But a minimum wage alone won’t provide the foundation workers need to build meaningful economic security. We need common-sense employment policies to address persistent income inequality and limit corporate power, including universal just-cause protections for all employees.”

Union avoidance consultants often 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—such as Littler Mendelson, Morgan Lewis, and Jackson Lewis—have developed substantial business specializing in union avoidance services, including for Amazon, Starbucks, and Trader Joe’s. Further, many union avoidance law firms provide employers services beyond these persuader activities, such as representation at National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) proceedings. 

Until now, the role of these law firms has largely gone unexamined because of loopholes in federal reporting laws. Through analyzing Law.com and NLRB case data, the report calculates the revenue law firms generate from employers who try to avoid unions and undermine collective bargaining with their workers. The report also updates previous EPI research on spending on union avoidance consultants. After accounting for overlap between these two totals, the report estimates that spending on attorneys (whether for representation, consulting, or both) and non-attorney consultants is roughly $1.7 billion a year.

This spending on anti-union law firms and consultants has an undeniable impact on workers’ ability to organize and bargain collectively. 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.

“Americans increasingly view unions favorably and recognize them as critical instruments for building a just economy. But many workers cannot join a union because our nation’s labor laws allow employers to derail workers’ unionization efforts with impunity,” said Margaret Poydock, EPI senior policy analyst and co-author of the report. 

“Unionizing is much harder than it should be,” said Teke Wiggin, strategic coordinator at LaborLab and another co-author. “That’s partly because there are no limits on the amount of time and money employers can invest in union avoidance, and because employers are only required to disclose a tiny fraction of anti-union campaign spending due to reporting loopholes. Our finding that employers spend about $1.7 billion on union avoidance attorneys and consultants every year shows that employers take full advantage of these deficits in U.S. labor law.”