Majorities of adults see decline of union membership as bad for the U.S. and working people

Majorities of Americans see the large reduction in the share of workers represented by unions over the past several decades as a bad thing for both the United States and its working people.

• 60% of U.S. adults say the decline has been bad for the country.
• 62% say this has been bad for working people.

The share of U.S. workers who belong to a union has fallen since 1983, when 20.1% were union members. In 2024, 9.9% of U.S. workers were in a union.

How we did this

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to understand Americans’ views of the decline in U.S. union membership in recent decades.

For this analysis, we surveyed 3,554 U.S. adults from Aug. 4 to 10, 2025. Everyone who took part in this survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), a group of people recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses who have agreed to take surveys regularly. This kind of recruitment gives nearly all U.S. adults a chance of selection. Interviews were conducted either online or by telephone with a live interviewer. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education, presidential vote (among voters) and other factors. Read more about the ATP’s methodology.

Here are the questions used for this analysis, the topline and the survey methodology.

Since Pew Research Center first asked these questions in 2021, majorities of adults have consistently said that the decline in union membership has been bad for both working people and the country.

The share of Americans who say this has been bad for the country is up 6 percentage points since last year (from 54%). The increase has come entirely among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents:

• Today, 82% of Democrats say this decline has been bad for the country, up from 69% who said this a year ago.
• 85% of Democrats also say the decline in union membership has been bad for working people, up from 74% in 2024.

By contrast, majorities of Republicans and GOP leaners continue to say that the decline in union membership has been good for the country (62%) and for working people (59%).

Demographic differences within the parties

Among Republicans

There are sizable age, income and educational gaps within the GOP about the impact of the union membership decline on working people. (The patterns are very similar on the question of its impact on the country.)

• 52% of Republicans under 35 say the decline of unions has been very or somewhat bad for working people. Smaller shares of older Republicans say this, including just 27% of those ages 65 and older.
• Lower-income Republicans (47%) are somewhat more likely than their middle-income (39%) and upper-income (35%) counterparts to say this.

Among Democrats

At least eight-in-ten Democrats across demographic groups see the decline in organized labor as bad for working people.

Ideological differences within the parties

While Republicans and Democrats differ greatly on how these shifts have impacted working people, ideological differences are also evident within both parties.

Among Republicans

A majority of conservative Republicans (67%) say the decline in organized labor membership has been at least somewhat good for working people. This includes 23% who say it has been very good.

Moderate and liberal Republicans are split: 44% say this has been at least somewhat good for working people, while 54% say it has been at least somewhat bad.

Among Democrats

Large majorities of Democrats across ideological groups say the decline in the percentage of workers represented by unions has been bad for working people. But liberal Democrats (92%) are more likely than conservative and moderate Democrats (79%) to say this.

Liberal Democrats are particularly likely to say the decline in organized labor has been very bad for working people: 51% say this, compared with 28% of conservative and moderate Democrats.

Note: This is an update of a post originally published on Feb. 18, 2022. Here are the questions used for this analysis, the topline and the survey methodology.