Younger workers have led a wave of renewed support for unions in recent years. Approval of unions stood at 77% among members of the Gen Z and Millennial generations in 2024—up from just 47% among Baby Boomers at the same age in 1976. Covid-19 pandemic safety concerns, historically tight labor markets, and several high-profile labor wins, including organizing drives at Starbucks and the UAW strike wave, likely contributed to this increased support for unions. Many young workers in the early 2020s were also attracted to the potential financial benefits of unions.
When explaining her support for a 2021 unionization drive at a Starbucks in Buffalo, NY, high school student Maya Panos cited the dire financial situation faced by many workers in her generation. “I feel like the Baby Boomers started at the start line, and now we’re farther and farther behind,” Panos said, comparing her generation’s economic prospects to those of previous generations. “Gen X are a mile behind, Millennials are two miles, and my generation is now like five miles behind. We’re sick of them saying we have equal opportunities; we have to make up those five miles.”
Many young people have turned to credit to cope with wage stagnation, job insecurity, and rising prices. Between 2003 and 2024, total outstanding debt levels among those aged 18 to 39 increased from $2.5 trillion to $5 trillion. Unsecured debts, including credit cards, student debt, personal loans, medical debt, and other higher-cost debts, represent a greater share of total debt among recent cohorts of young adults. More than one out of three people in the Millennial Cohort had been pressured by a debt collector by age 40. Necessary expenses such as medical care are major contributors to young adults’ indebtedness and financial challenges; in 2021, 18% of young adults aged 18 to 25 reported taking on credit card debt to pay for medical expenses, with another 9% having used a payday loan to do so.
How do union jobs shape the financial situations of young adults? While there are many studies linking union jobs to better labor market outcomes, it’s not clear whether or how these benefits translate to financial advantages beyond the job market. If union jobs are associated with financial advantages outside the labor market, then this information could be used to garner even more support among the growing ranks of younger workers who find unions appealing.
In a recent study published in Work and Occupations, Rachel Dwyer and I provide new evidence of the financial advantages of union jobs for younger workers. Using debt portfolios as an indicator of financial advantage, we found that, among a national sample of more than 7,500 U.S. young adults born in the early 1980s and surveyed in the late 2010s, younger workers with more unionized careers held more advantageous types of debts than those with less unionized careers by age 30.
For this study, we defined “advantageous” based on the debt’s purpose, underwriting criteria, institutional context, and cost in interest. We viewed debts tied to wealth building and income-generating opportunities as indicative of financial advantage (e.g., mortgages and car loans), while debts associated with consumption and past-due bills were characteristic of financial disadvantage (e.g., credit card debt, payday loans, medical debt, etc.). We considered student debt as occupying a more ambiguous position; while student debt is associated with investments in higher education, student debt is not tied to a physical asset and can’t be discharged in bankruptcy.
Drawing on prior research on the labor market payoffs of unionization, we hypothesized that younger workers with more unionized careers would be more likely to hold debts associated with investment in wealth building and geographic mobility, and less likely to rely on costly financial coping strategies, including consumption debts and unpaid bills. Specifically, we argued that the higher wages, job security, and superior non-wage benefits of union jobs would be associated with a more advantageous pattern of debt holding for younger workers with more unionized careers.
Our primary data source was the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY-97), a nationally representative survey of U.S. youth born between 1980 and1984. The initial survey was fielded in 1997 when this cohort was between the ages of 12 and 16, with annual follow-ups from 1998 to 2011, and biennial follow-ups from 2013 to 2019. The longitudinal structure of the data allowed us to construct cumulative measures of union coverage throughout each respondent’s early career from age 18 to age 30. The NLSY-97 survey included comprehensive data on debt as well as sociodemographic and labor market characteristics. Although our use of observational data meant that our study was correlational rather than causal, we included a comprehensive set of control variables to rule out potential alternative explanations of the patterns we observed.
We found that younger workers with more unionized careers were significantly more likely to hold mortgages and vehicle debts by age 30 than those with less unionized careers, accounting for differences in a wide range of sociodemographic and labor market characteristics. Having a mortgage or a vehicle loan demonstrates financial advantage and stability through credit access and provides important resources in the form of housing and geographic mobility.
We also found a negative relationship between union coverage and student debt holding at age 30. While this relationship was observed among the full sample and those who had ever attended college, it is likely that the result partially reflects differences in college-going. Union jobs provide less-educated workers with an alternative pathway to social mobility outside of a four-year college degree, which bypasses the potential need to take on student debt to finance college attendance.
Unexpectedly, we failed to find consistent evidence that unionized careers were associated with less credit card debt, which runs against our expectation that the labor market payoffs of union jobs would allow younger workers to reduce their reliance on credit cards. We speculated that this may reflect a countervailing effect involving the consumptive role of credit cards in the U.S. Higher earnings support greater consumption and a potential willingness to carry some credit card debt, particularly during a financially intensive period of life such as the transition to adulthood.
We found stronger empirical support for our expectations regarding consumption debts and past-due bills, however. We found that young adults with more unionized careers in this cohort were significantly less likely to hold other debts to businesses, including high-cost personal finance loans, payday loans, medical debt, past-due rent, and other unpaid bills associated with financial hardship and disadvantage.
In tests of mechanisms, we found that higher cumulative early career earnings—measured by the respondent’s total annual earnings accumulated between age 18 and 30—accounted for most of the observed relationships between career union coverage and debt holding around age 30. This suggests that the higher wages and enhanced job security afforded by union jobs partially explains the more advantageous pattern of debt holding among young workers with more unionized careers.
We also found that younger workers in industries and regions where unions were more powerful in the 2000s and 2010s were more likely to hold a mortgage or car loan, and less likely to hold the highest-cost consumption debts. Thus, regardless of the union coverage experienced over one’s personal career, workers in industries and regions where union membership was denser experienced more financial advantages. This is consistent with evidence from prior research on the contextual role of unions for raising wages and improving working conditions for non-union workers in adjacent industries. Importantly, we also found that the advantages of unionized careers for mortgage holding were stronger among younger workers who worked in more highly unionized industries and regions in this period.
This last finding connects with the experiences of some older union members who began their careers when more Americans belonged to a union and unions had more power. Francis King, a 65-year-old member of the Seattle area machinists’ union that recently reached a new contract deal with Boeing, contrasted the way his union job allowed him to build a career and to afford a middle-class lifestyle with the financial insecurity faced by some younger members of his local, many of whom do not view the manufacturing jobs at Boeing as providing a viable long-term career path.
“When I was hired on, buying a house was in sight. Buying a car. Living in this area,” King recalled from the early days of his time at Boeing. “Who wouldn’t want to come here? Then the tide turned.”
Consistent with King’s sentiment, our findings suggest that the financial advantages of union jobs are contingent on the power of unions in the broader economy. Without substantial institutional reform to protect and expand collective bargaining rights at the federal level, including through legislation such as the Protecting the Right to Organize Act , the financial advantages of union jobs could be refined to an ever-smaller group of workers in the few industries and regions where unions remain strong in the U.S. While labor benefited from a favorable regulatory and enforcement environment under the Biden administration, the second Trump Administration will likely cede more power to management.
Yet, the historically strong, bipartisan support for unions among younger workers is a hopeful sign that the financial advantages of union jobs could reach more Americans in the future. Polls from the American National Election Study in 2020 found that most Republicans and Democrats in the Gen Z and Millennial Cohorts held positive views of unions. Unions have long been seen as a counterbalance to economic divides that many conservatives and liberals agree are too vast.
Indeed, Panos mentioned outrage over inequality as a primary reason for Gen Z’s revitalized support for unions in the post-Covid-19 pandemic economy: “I feel like people of my generation are just sick and tired of the way wealth and power in this country are held by the one percent.”
However, it may require more than concerns over inequality to translate public approval of unions into increased union membership. Drawing on data from 1977 to 2023, including a 2022 survey of frontline workers, an Economic Policy Institute report by John Ahlquist, Jake Grumbach, and Thomas Kochan attributes growing support for unions to the rise of the “union curious”—workers who are supportive of unions, but are unsure if they would vote to certify a union at their workplace.
Among non-union workers asked whether they would vote for or against a union if a certification election were to be held at their workplace, the share who would vote “no” has declined while the share who would vote “yes” has increased in recent decades. But the share saying “don’t know” increased most dramatically over this period, from just 8% in 1977 to a whopping 43% in 2022.
The rise of the “union curious” suggests that younger workers might need more information about the potential benefits of union jobs. Our study draws attention to the financial advantages of unionized careers, measured by increased access to wealth-producing credit and reduced reliance on costly consumer debts, as another important benefit of unions for workers in the 21st century.
Note: Probability of debt holding around age 30 across levels of cumulative early career union coverage from age 18-30. Estimates control for a range of sociodemographic and labor market characteristics. “Other debts” are remaining debts to other businesses, such as stores, doctor’s offices, hospitals, or banks, including any installment plans, rent-to-own accounts, and any other businesses that money was owed to. Shaded regions represent the 95% confidence intervals.
Source: Rhodes, Alec P. and Rachel E. Dwyer. 2024. “Labor Unions, Debt, and Financial Advantage in Young Adulthood in the United States.” Work and Occupations, Online First, https://doi.org/10.1177/07308884241273248.
Note: Response breakdown among non-union workers in the U.S. to the following survey question: “If an election were to be held today to decide whether you should be represented by a union, would you vote for or against the union?” Tallies do not necessarily sum to 100 due to rounding.
Source: Ahlquist, John S., Jake Grumbach, and Thomas Kochan. 2024. The Rise of the “Union Curious”: Support for Unionization among America’s Frontline Workers. Economic Policy Institute Report, Jul. 16, https://epi.org/282870.
