Talk:Labor unions in the United States

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Labor unions in the United States was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
June 6, 2006	Good article nominee	Not listed

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Wiki Education assignment: Human Resource Economics Fall 2021

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 23 August 2022 and 9 December 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Karen.ulloa (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Karen.ulloa (talk) 03:40, 8 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Income inequality

When covering the highly politicized subject of income inequality, I would request that editors here stick to high-quality economic RSes, and not sociology research or various political media. That de-unionization had some causal effect on income inequality seems obvious to me, but that it was as significant as is often claimed is dubious. Nowhere near half the labor force was ever unionized, while income/wealth inequality has been systemic throughout the entire economy. From this survey of economists[1] I think we can glean two things:

Increased unionization would undoubtedly boost the earnings of union members; BUT

Whether this would cause the wages of the median household to rise is uncertain

While the first question was nearly unanimous (nearly 80% either agreed or strongly agreed, with no dissent), the second question generated ~50% uncertainty, 14% disagreeing and just 23% disagreeing. Some of the comments below are instructive. Richard Schmalensee of MIT writes that:

"Hard to imagine that anything but an implausibly large increase in unionization would have a noticeable effect on the median household."

Looking at employment data, this is a reasonable statement.

Also worth mentioning that only 2% of these economists agreed that more unionization would have a positive effect on employment, while 44% disagreed. Jonathan f1 (talk) 01:12, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]