Unions Make Jobs Good

A quick reminder from Dean Baker–there is no such thing as a “good job.” The good jobs we nostalgically remember today as good were only made good by unions forcing the companies to pay up for these super crappy jobs. There’s nothing inherent about a steel job that makes it better than a fast food job.

While further research may produce different results, there is little doubt that the manufacturing premium has been sharply reduced, if not eliminated altogether, over the last four decades. The main reason for the decline in the premium is not a secret, there has been a huge drop in the percentage of manufacturing workers who are unionized.

In 1980, 32.3 percent of manufacturing workers were union members. This compares to a unionization rate of 15.0 percent for the rest of the private sectors. By comparison, in 2023 just 7.9 percent of manufacturing workers were union members, only slightly higher than the 5.9 percent rate for the private sector as a whole.

The implication of the loss of the wage premium coupled with the decline in unionization rates is that there is little reason to believe that an increase in the number of manufacturing jobs will mean more good jobs, unless they are also unionized. It is not the factories that make these jobs good jobs, it is the unions.