Union Incomes May Seem Better Than Non-Union, But Are They Really? - Forbes

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In all the arguments over legislation like the PRO Act that is supposed to support unions, one of the popular positions for proponents is that union work is obviously better than non-union. Government figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics are supposed to absolutely show that union workers make more than non-union.

I’ve seen people quote these numbers repeatedly in an absolute and flat way. After a personally crazy summer, things slowed down enough that I decided to take a look. What I found was that, at one level, the claims seem to be true. But when you dig in deeper, the picture is much fuzzier and the simply view dependent on different types of work being lumped together. There is also some significant inequities by race, with black union workers making significant less than white ones. And that, too, may be an issue of the mix of different work types.

The usual figures quotes are from Table 2 in the document “Union Members — 2020.” Median weekly earnings of union members are $1,144, while those of non-union members are $958. The weekly difference of $186 leads to an annual gap of $9,672.

Fair enough, at that level—all people 16 and older working—there is a clear advantage to union work. However, there are a number of caveats:

1. Data excludes all self-employed people. According to the Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy, quoting data from the Federal Reserve Board, both median and mean net worth of self-employed people are nearly four times that of employees. That isn’t income, but something has to build that level of wealth.
2. As the BLS report mentions, “The comparisons of earnings in this news release are on a broad level and do not control for many factors that can be important in explaining earnings differences.”
3. Unionization is highly concentrated in such fields as protective service occupations and in education, training, and library occupations.
4. Union membership rates are highest in the 45-to-64 age range, which would normally represent higher earning levels, skewing results.
5. Union membership rates are about 11.8% for full-time employees and 5.8% for part-time, also skewing income. (Some might argue that unions are responsible for there being more full-time work, and that might be true, but someone would have to prove that the causation wasn’t due to some other factor.)

The union median wage advantage drops to $5,460 a year ($1,240 a week for union versus $1,129 non-union) when looking at men who are 25 years or older. The difference keeps dropping with increases in age. At 45-to-54 years, median union weekly income is only $77 higher than non-union. For 55-to-64 years, the difference is down to $28. And at any age, you’d have to subtract dues to see the real difference.

The difference between union and non incomes is larger for women. For example, across all 25 and older, the median difference in weekly pay is $177, or about $9,204 a year. At 45 to 54, the difference is $204. Women’s incomes were much lower than men in the same age range. Frequently, median income for unionized women was lower than for non-unionized men for the same ages.

Data by race was only available for ages 16 and up. For Asians, non-union male workers make $230 a week more than unionized workers.

Union Asian men earned the same as union white men, at $1,237 a week. Black men in unions earned $1,022 and Hispanic men made $1,064. For women, it was $877 for whites, $742 for blacks, $1,124 for Asians, and $684 for Hispanics. There is no general racial leveling.

The conclusion is that taking overall categories of union versus non-union is anything but an apples-to-applies comparison. Industry segment, age, and race are all factors that complicate the numbers so many are ready to quote in a facile way.

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Union Incomes May Seem Better Than Non-Union, But Are They Really? - Forbes
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