71% Approve Of Labor Unions And 47% Want Them To Have More Influence

 

These charts Are from the Gallup Poll -- done between August 3rd and 24th of a nationwide sample of 1,200 adults, with a 4 point margin of error.

The U.S. Labor Force Is Shrinking (And That's Not Good)

Robert Reich comments on our shrinking labor force:

This month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the labor participation rate — the percentage of people of working age who are working or actively looking for work — is now down to 61.5 percent. That’s 0.6 percentage points lower than it was at the first of the year.

 

In other words, the U.S. economy has lost 1 million workers since January.

 

It’s the lowest level of labor participation in 50 years outside the pandemic.

The official unemployment rate is 4.2 percent, which is considered relatively good. But don’t be fooled. That’s 4.2 percent of people who are working or actively seeking work. If you add in all the people who are no longer working or seeking work, the official rate would be far higher. 

What accounts for the disappearance of so many workers? Some baby boomers have taken early retirement. Some workers have been caught up in Trump’s undocumented dragnet.

But the biggest reason is the scarcity of stable, well-paying jobs.

 

Lots of people have concluded it’s not worth it. The cost commuting to — or paying for childcare in order to hold down — a shitty and insecure job has led them to give up on paid work altogether. They’re living more simply, moving in with parents or friends or adult children, or just doing without. 

The best measure of how America is doing isn’t the unemployment rate, or the stock market, or the rate of economic growth, or the inflation rate, or the average wage. 

It’s how well most Americans are living. The reality is that most Americans are struggling. 

It's Labor Vs. Capital (And Labor Is Losing)

The following post is by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich: 

It’s impossible to understand American politics without also understanding the American economy (and vice versa). Politics and economics may be different disciplines, but they’re two sides of the same coin.

 

This came home to me again when I saw Thursday’s report on the U.S. gross domestic product. 

Numbers can be pretty boring, but bear with me. Worker compensation — wages and benefits — grew 0.8 percent from the fourth quarter of 2025 to the first quarter of 2026. Corporate profits grew 2.7 percent. 

When you adjust for inflation, hourly wages have risen 3 percent since the end of 2019. Corporate profits have risen 50 percent. 

Workers’ share of the nation’s income has now dropped to the lowest it’s been since records began in 1947. Profits’ share is the highest since 1950.

 

Most people who depend on wages for a living are struggling, while a small minority at the top who own most shares of stock and private equity — that is, people who rely on capital gains — have never had it as good.

 

The trend toward lower wages and higher profits began in the 1980s, increased in the 2000s, picked up speed after the pandemic, and is about to explode as Artificial Intelligence takes over. 

In coming months, three companies centered on AI will go public — SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic — with expected valuations of around $1 trillion each (reflecting the gargantuan profits investors expect). But what about workers?

This is not just morally wrong. “Income from capital risks replacing income from labor,” Pope Leo wrote in Magnifica Humanitas, his encyclical letter devoted to the effects of AI, released this week. 

It also threatens the future stability of our economic and political system.

 

What accounts for the increasing shift of the American economy from wages to profits, even before AI?

 

One big reason is monopolization. The economy has become concentrated in a few giant corporations with the power both to raise prices and keep wages down. 

Sure, there are still lots of small businesses and mom-and-pop operations. But the gravitational center of the U.S. economy is now Amazon, Alphabet (Google), Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Meta, Walmart, Costco, Home Depot, Kroger, United Health, Cigna, CVS, AT&T, Verizon, ExxonMobil, Chevron, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Vanguard, Fidelity, Blackstone, Apollo, and KKR. 

These giants control large swathes of the economy. They also exert significant political power. They’re like black holes in space, sucking in vast sums of money.

 

Their political power makes it impossible to know whether government policy is based on the public interest or private gain. 

Consider Trump’s war in Iran and its resulting surge in energy prices. The energy-price rise has caused after-tax disposable income to drop and the profits of energy companies to soar. Did Trump decide to go to war because he thought it necessary, or because Big Oil nudged him into it?

Workers, meanwhile, no longer have any countervailing power. In the 1950s, over a third of workers in the private sector were unionized. That gave them enough bargaining power to claim a significant share of the total economy. Now, only 6 percent of workers are unionized. Their bargaining power has been further eroded by their easy replacement by lower-wage workers in Asia and by software. AI will further erode it. 

This trend is not sustainable. It feeds growing anger at the system, which demagogues like Trump exploit for their own ends. 

What should be done? Let me list five steps (I’ll go into each in greater detail in coming months). 

1. For one thing, we’re going to need a new era of antitrust. Giant corporations will have to be busted up. 

2. We’ll also need to tax those at the top, especially on the value of their ownership of capital. (California voters will likely be asked to vote on a billionaire tax in November.)

3. We’ll need to regulate AI and simultaneously provide a universal basic income to cushion those who lose their jobs because of it. 

4. Universal health care will be a necessity (perhaps via Medicare for all) along with subsidized childcare and eldercare.

 

5. Finally, we’ll need to distribute capital far more widely, so that the broad American public has a palpable stake in the rip-roaring stock market and the AI tsunami. 

None of these fixes will be easy. Even if all are implemented, they may still be insufficient. 

But, my friends, we have no choice but to try. We’ve already witnessed what mass anger can do to America, in the form of Trump. Unless we act soon, we’re likely to have Trumps, or worse, as far as the eye can see.

About 248,000 Workers Filed For Unemployment Last Week

The Labor Department released its weekly unemployment report on Thursday. It showed about 248,000 workers filed for unemployment benefits in the week ending on June 7th. Here is the official Labor Department statement:

In the week ending June 7, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 248,000, unchanged from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised up by 1,000 from 247,000 to 248,000. The 4-week moving average was 240,250, an increase of 5,000 from the previous week's revised average. This is the highest level for this average since August 26, 2023 when it was 245,000. The previous week's average was revised up by 250 from 235,000 to 235,250.

In The Capital/Labor Battle Biden Sides With Labor

The following post is by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich: 

The largest and oldest class struggle in America has been between capital and labor — between the owners of big corporations and the people who work for them, between those who live off their investments and those who live off their wages.

Today, this struggle takes the form of giant corporations that have monopolized their markets and workers who are trying to organize labor unions. 

This is why you’re hearing so much about the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department going after Amazon and Google, respectively. 

(They’re also going after Ticketmaster and Live Nation, Kroger and Albertsons, and a wide range of other giant corporations and proposed mergers.)

And why you’re also hearing so much about strikes — the UAW, writers and actors, nurses, workers at Kaiser Permanente, Starbucks baristas, and others. And about attempts to organize Amazon and other anti-union companies. 

In this struggle, corporate monopolies and labor organizations both seek more economic power. 

How? The side that can reduce choices available to the other side — through monopolization of the market, or through labor organizing — gains power. 

Since the 1970s, corporate monopolizing has increased while labor organizing has been on the wane. 

Antitrust law had become a dead letter. Even Democratic Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama abandoned it. 

Meanwhile, corporations routinely bashed unions and fired workers who attempted to form them (often treating back pay they had to give fired workers as costs of doing business). 

And corporations moved to so-called “right-to-work” states that enacted laws making it particularly difficult to form unions. 

Carter, Clinton, and Obama all promised “labor law reform” that would strengthen unions. None ever followed through. 

But under Joe Biden, there’s been a monumental shift. Antitrust enforcement has surged. Efforts to form unions have been protected and encouraged. 

This shift has gotten lost under the mainstream media’s fixation with government spending, taxing, and the federal debt. 

This is too bad, because the shift has been one of Biden’s most important achievements. If it continues under a second Biden term, it could change the structure of the U.S. economy — to bring capital and labor into better balance.

Biden appointed Lina Khan chair of the FTC and gave her a majority of commissioners who are serious about rooting out monopolies. Biden also appointed trust-buster Jonathan Kanter to run the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department. 

Khan and Kanter are the most aggressive anti-monopolists in half a century.

Meanwhile, Biden appointed Jennifer Abruzzo to be general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board and gave her a board that’s serious about giving workers the right to organize. 

Under Abruzzo’s leadership, the NLRB is revolutionizing labor organizing — requiring companies that have committed unfair labor practices to bargain with their employees, accelerating the period between union petitions and elections, making it harder for companies to fire workers for organizing or to misclassify employees as independent contractors, and much else. 

Part of the current rash of strikes reflects the increasing labor power being brought about by the NLRB.

These three agencies — the FTC, the Antitrust Division of Justice, and the NLRB — are the new crucibles in the struggle between capital and labor. Step by step, they’re diminishing the power of giant corporations and increasing the power of workers. 

But to make a palpable difference, they will have to keep at it for years — at the least, through a second Biden administration. If Khan, Kanter, and Abruzzo move to other jobs, their replacements will need to be no less aggressive.

 

The struggle is not easy. Big corporations and Wall Street are appealing many of their administrative actions and successful court decisions. And, needless to say, big corporations and Wall Street have armies of lawyers whose job it is to enlarge the power of capital and suppress the power of labor. 

Yet I’m astounded at how much progress the three agencies, under these three leaders, have made in just over two and a half years. And how little the mainstream media have reported on the overall strategy — especially given how central it could become to the lives of average Americans.

The Labor Strikes Are Good For The United States

Robert Reich explains why labor activism is good for the country: 

America is in the midst of the biggest surge in labor activity in a quarter century. 

The United Auto Workers, the Writers Guild of America, the actors’ union known as SAG-AFTRA, Starbucks workers, Amazon workers, the Teamsters and UPS, flight attendants. The list goes on.

Over 4 million workdays were lost to stoppages last month, according to the Labor Department. That’s the most since 2000. And this was before the UAW struck the Big Three.

Some worry about the effect of all this on the U.S. economy, and view organized labor as a “special interest” demanding more than it deserves.

Rubbish.

 

Labor activism has proven good for the economy in the long run. And organized labor isn’t a special interest. It’s the leading edge of the American workforce.

What accounts for this extraordinary moment of labor activity?

Not that workers enjoy striking. Even where unions have funds to help striking workers offset lost wages, they rarely make up even half of what’s forgone. Large corporations whose operations are hobbled by strikes often lay off other workers, as the Big Three and their suppliers are now threatening to do.

The reason workers go on strike is their expectation that the longer-term gains will be worth the sacrifices.

Today’s labor market continues to be tight, despite efforts by the Fed to slow the economy and make it harder for workers to get raises. So employers (like UPS) are more inclined to give ground to avoid a prolonged strike.

But something far more basic is going on here. As I travel around the country, I hear from average working people an anger and bitterness I haven't heard for decades. It centers on several things.

The first is that wages have barely increased while corporate profits are in the stratosphere.

 

Average weekly nonsupervisory wages, a measure of blue-collar earnings, were higher in 1969 (adjusted for inflation) than they are now.

The American dream of upward mobility has turned into a nightmare of falling behind. Whereas 90 percent of American adults born in the early 1940s were earning more than their parents by the time they reached their prime earning years, this proportion has steadily declined. Only half of adults born in the mid-1980s are now earning more than their parents by their prime earning years.

Nearly one out of every five American workers is in a part-time job. Two-thirds are living paycheck to paycheck.

Meanwhile, executive compensation has gone through the roof. In 1965, CEOs of America’s largest corporations were paid, on average, 20 times the pay of average workers. Today, the ratio is over 398 to 1.

Not only has CEO pay exploded. So has the pay of top executives just below them. The share of corporate income devoted to compensating the five highest-paid executives of large corporations ballooned from an average of 5 percent in 1993 to more than 15 percent today.

Corporate apologists claim CEOs and other top executives are worth these staggering sums because their corporations have performed so well. They compare star CEOs to star baseball players and movie stars.

But most CEOs have simply ridden the stock market wave. Even if a company’s CEO had done nothing but play online solitaire, the company’s stock price would have soared.

Stock buybacks have also skyrocketed — a huge subsidy to investors that further tips the scales against working people. The richest 1 percent of Americans own about half the value of all shares of stock. The richest 10 percent, over 90 percent.

Why don’t corporations devote more of their income to research and development, or to higher wages and benefits for average workers? In a word, greed. 

Small wonder that unions are more popular than they’ve been in a generation. A Gallup poll published in August found that 67 percent of Americans approve of unions, the fifth straight year such support has exceeded the long-term polling average of 62 percent.

President Biden has pitched himself as the most pro-union president in recent history. More surprisingly, Republican politicians are trying to curry favor with union workers as well. Both parties know that much of the working class is up for grabs in 2024.

American workers still have little to no countervailing power relative to large American corporations. Unionized workers now comprise only 6 percent of private-sector workforce — down from over a third in the 1960s.

Which is why the activism of the UAW, the Writers Guild, SAG-AFTRA, the Teamsters, flight attendants, Amazon warehouse workers, and Starbucks workers is so important.

In a very real sense, these workers are representing all American workers. If they win, they’ll energize other workers, even those who are not unionized. They’ll mobilize some to form or join unions.

 

They’ll push non-union employers to raise wages and benefits out of a fear of becoming unionized if they don’t. They’ll galvanize other workers to stage wildcat strikes for better pay and working conditions.

For far too long, America’s top executives, Wall Street traders, and biggest investors have siphoned off almost all the economic gains. This is unsustainable, economically and politically.

It’s economically unsustainable because the only way businesses can sell the goods and services American workers produce is if workers have enough money to buy them. If most gains continue to go to the top, the economy will become ever more fragile, susceptible to downdrafts and crashes. 

Today’s mainstream media emphasizes the feared negative effects of the current wave of strikes on the U.S. economy, forgetting that the wave of strikes in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s helped create the largest middle class the world had ever seen — the key to America’s postwar prosperity.

Stagnant wages and widening inequality are politically unsustainable because they foster anger and bitterness easily channeled by demagogic politicians (re: Donald Trump and his enablers in the Republican Party) into bigotry, paranoia, xenophobia, and authoritarianism.

The current wave of strikes isn’t bad for America. It’s good for America.

Labor is not a “special interest.” It is, in a real sense, all of us.