As the triple-threat of AI-fueled unemployment, rampant inflation, and further erosion of workers’ rights take their toll, US workers are throwing their support behind a long-neglected institution: labor unions.
According to a new survey by polling firm Gallup, a full 47 percent of Americans now say they want unions to have more influence than they do today. That’s up from 43 percent in 2023 and a dismal 25 percent in 2009 — setting, per Gallup, a new record for the 21st century.
At the same time, the percentage of Americans harboring anti-labor sentiment — those who want unions to have even “less influence” than they do today — have also set a record for the new millennium, reaching just 23 percent. Even that share is shrinking, though: it’s down from 26 percent in 2023, and is nearly half the record 21st century highs of 42 percent, set in 2009.
What’s more, overall “approval” of labor unions has reached a whopping 71 percent, on par with Gallup’s polling from May of 1965, a period marked by an unrecognizably strong fervor for labor protections — but also the beginning of the long decline of organized labor in the US.
