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Chart Of The Day Unions Doing Worse Than Ever

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by Zubin Jelveh
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Aug 22 2008 1:18pm EDT

Chart of the Day: Unions Doing Worse Than Ever

Stanford's John Pencavel has created an indicator of union well-being which takes into account the wage difference between union and nonunion workers and the fraction of workers who are union members. Applying this to the United States, Pencavel says:

The computed indicators of trade union well-being imply that U.S. unions were most successful in the 1950s and 1960s and their well-being in the first decade of the twenty-first century is little different from that in the 1920s when unionism was struggling to gain a foothold. U.S. unions appear to have been more successful for Black workers and especially for Black men.

The chart below shows how two similar indices of union success have changed since the 1920's. Since its peak in the 1950's and 60's, union well-being has fallen by 25 percent.

union_success.gif

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