The Geography of Union Decline in the U.S.

The decline of organized labor in the United States has been a renewed topic of interest in recent years. Yet, little is known about the places and groups of people impacted by union decline. Economist Zachary Schaller will create a city-level dataset on National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) representation elections (1963-2022) to examine where unions declined, who experienced the decline, and how it has affected labor market outcomes. He will pull data from Farber and Western (2001), Holmes (2006), Lee and Mas (2012), and the NLRB to generate the dataset.