Every worker knows that wages have been stuck in neutral for a long time. But the trend has landed hardest on young workers, whose real wages (i.e. wages after you adjust for inflation) have actually dropped by ten percent (!) between 1979 and today.
That’s why I was excited to see a new survey from the Center for Economic and Policy Research that shows there is a clear way for young workers to overcome this — join together in a union:
On average, unionization raised young workers’ wages 12.4 percent - or about $1.75 per hour - relative to young workers with similar characteristics who were not in unions.
The union impact on health insurance and pension coverage was even larger. Young workers who were in unions were about 17 percentage points more likely to have employer-provided health insurance and about 24 percentage points more likely to have a pension plan than similar non-union workers.
The benefits of unionization were also high for young workers in typically low-wage occupations. Young workers in unions in otherwise low-wage occupations earned, on average, 10.2 percent more than their non-union counterparts. Unionized young workers in low-wage occupations were also 27 percentage points more likely than comparable non-union workers to have employer-provided health insurance, and 26 percentage points more likely to have a pension plan.
