091426 UNION GROWTH (copy)

Jim Talamonti Fri, September 11, 2026 at 8:01 PM UTC

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Members of the Chicago Teachers Union gather at the Illinois State Capitol during a rally, May 15, 2024. Catrina Barker / The Center Square

(The Center Square) – A new study says union membership is rising and helping taxpayers along the way.

The 12th annual State of the Unions study from the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and the Project for Middle Class Renewal at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign said the U.S. added more than 411,000 union workers last year and Illinois added 24,000 union members.

The report said workers in the Land of Lincoln earn higher wages than their counterparts in Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky and Wisconsin even when factoring in cost-of-living differences.

ILEPI economist Frank Manzo said union membership boosts earnings by 11% in Illinois.

“Union members are significantly more likely to be married and up to half as likely to rely on taxpayer-funded welfare programs, so there's a taxpayer cost to weakening unions,” Manzo told The Center Square.

Illinois Policy Institute Vice President of Policy and Litigation Mailee Smith said government unions have actually driven up costs.

“We see that in our gas tax. We see that in the 63 taxes and fees that have been put into place since [Gov. J.B.] Pritzker took office,” Smith told The Center Square.

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Manzo said more Americans are turning to unions as a bulwark against the rising cost of living, adding that a majority of Democrats, independents and Republicans support unions.

“This membership surge occurred everywhere across the country, but was three times larger in states that protect collective bargaining rights, like Illinois, compared to those with so-called right-to-work laws,” Manzo said.

Smith said the study used raw numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“In the context of overall growth, that percentage has remained stagnant,” Smith said.

Smith said 13.1% of workers in Illinois were union members in 2025, the same rate as in 2024.

According to the State of the Unions report, the union membership rate is 13.0% in Illinois’ metropolitan areas and 14.6% in rural portions of Illinois.

Both are more unionized than their national counterparts.

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Source: “AOL Money”