AP Photo/Paul Sancya
- Union households have a significantly higher median wealth than nonunion families, Fed data showed.
- Being in a union also helps to reduce racial and educational wealth gaps.
- However, union membership rates have been declining for years and hit a record low in 2023.
It pays to be in a union, according to a new analysis of Americans' household finances.
The Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, looked at just how much better union workers are faring. By analyzing the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances, CAP found that in 2022, union households held $338,482 in median wealth. Meanwhile, nonunion households had $199,948.
Being in a union also substantially chips away at racial and educational wealth gaps, per CAP's analysis. Black, nonunion households have a median household wealth of $61,500; meanwhile, Black union households hold around $164,6000 in median household wealth. Black workers are also more likely than workers of other races to be in a union, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with their union membership rates outpacing their white, Asian, and Hispanic counterparts.
Unions particularly pay off for workers without a high school degree and again seem to be bridging educational wealth gaps, per the data. The median wealth of union members without a high school degree is over three times that of nonunion workers without a high school degree — $69,510 compared to $22,800 respectively.
Since the job of a union typically involves negotiating higher pay and better benefits for its members, it's well-documented that union members in the US tend to make more than their nonunionized counterparts. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' analysis of union membership in 2023 found that union members had median weekly earnings of $1,263 — around $65,676 annually — compared to $1,090 for nonunion workers. Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, median weekly earnings for all workers came in at $1,145 in the last quarter of 2023.
Research has previously found that union membership could lead to over a million dollars more in lifetime earnings. Zachary Parolin of Bocconi University and Tom VanHeuvelen of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities found that workers who spent their whole careers in unions saw a $1.3 million bump in lifetime earnings. That research also found that unions can help bridge educational wealth divides: Workers who don't have a college degree — but have spent the entirety of their careers in unions — were actually anticipated to make more than workers who have a college degree but are not in a union.
However, those wage benefits are restricted to a small segment of workers. Union membership rates have declined for decades, reaching a record low of 10% in 2023. That comes even as twice as many workers went on strike or work stoppages in 2023 than the year prior, including high-profile wins by the United Auto Workers, UPS Teamsters, and SAG-AFTRA.
The researcher VanHeuvelen previously told BI that the decline in union membership would be like if the wage premium for going to college disappeared.
"If suddenly the United States lost the college premium that would be a disaster," he said. "A lot of newspaper articles would be written about that. But it seems like we've lost something equivalent for America's working class."
Has joining a union meant a substantial pay bump for you? Contact this reporter at jkaplan@businessinsider.com.