Support for Unions Is Spiking as AI Threatens Jobs
Support for Unions Is Spiking as AI Threatens Jobs
摘要: Rising Tide
Support for Unions Is Spiking as AI Threatens Jobs
America's approval of organized labor is higher than it's been since 1965.
正文
Rising Tide
Support for Unions Is Spiking as AI Threatens Jobs
America's approval of organized labor is higher than it's been since 1965.
Joe Wilkins
Published
Sep 12, 2026 6:03 AM EDT
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As the triple-threat of AI-fueled unemployment, rampant inflation, and further erosion of workers’ rights take their toll, US workers are throwing their support behind a long-neglected institution: labor unions.
According to a
new survey
by polling firm Gallup, a full 47 percent of Americans now say they want unions to have more influence than they do today. That’s up from 43 percent in 2023 and a dismal 25 percent in 2009 — setting, per Gallup, a new record for the 21st century.
At the same time, the percentage of Americans harboring anti-labor sentiment — those who want unions to have even “less influence” than they do today — have also set a record for the new millennium, reaching just 23 percent. Even that share is shrinking, though:
t’s down from 26 percent in 2023, and is nearly half the record 21st century highs of 42 percent, set in 2009.
What’s more, overall “approval” of labor unions has reached a whopping 71 percent, on par with Gallup’s polling from May of 1965, a period marked by an unrecognizably strong fervor for labor protections — but also
the beginning
of the long decline of organized labor in the US.
Yet despite similar pro-labor attitudes, the differences between 1965 and 2026 could not be more pronounced. At that point some 60 years ago, nearly
one in three
Americans belonged to a union, compared to just
one in ten
in 2025. According to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the volume of
work stoppages
grew steadily throughout the 1960s, with the average duration of all worker-led shutdowns peaking at a whopping