Drew DeSilver

Most Americans like labor unions, at least in the abstract. A majority (55%) holds a favorable view of unions, versus 33% who hold an unfavorable view, according to a Pew Research Center survey from earlier this year. Despite those fairly benign views, unionization rates in the United States have dwindled in recent decades. As of 2017, just 10.7% of all wage and salary workers were union members, matching the record low set in 2016, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

At least 65 of the current voting members of Congress are immigrants or the children of immigrants. These members represent nearly half of U.S. states.

Despite some ups and downs over the past several decades, today's real average wage in the U.S. has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. And most of what wage gains there have been have flowed to the highest-paid tier of workers.

Mitch McConnell’s decision to shorten the chamber’s August recess isn’t unprecedented. But in an election year – when a third of senators are on the campaign trail – it’s unusual.

Of the 73 regular and special Senate elections that have been held since 2013, 69 were won by candidates belonging to the party that won that state's most recent presidential race.

Read a Q&A with Amy Mitchell, director of journalism research at Pew Research Center, on a new report that explores Americans' ability to distinguish factual news statements from opinions.

The U.S. House of Representatives has one voting member (435 in total) for every 747,000 or so Americans. That's by far the highest ratio of population to representatives of any industrialized democracy, and the highest it's ever been in U.S. history.

About 55.7% of the U.S. voting-age population cast ballots in the 2016 presidential election, placing America behind most of its OECD peers.

Only about 5% of the chief executive officers of 1,500 companies we examined were women. Among the tier of executives just below the CEO in terms of pay and position in the corporate hierarchy, 11.5% were women.

The vast majority of proposed amendments die quiet, little-mourned deaths in committees and subcommittees.