Unions 30 years ago are making people richer today

September 14, 2015

People whose parents were in the labor movement decades ago are earning more today than those whose parents were not. Why?

Union Yes; Union check yesUnion membership has its perks: higher wagesbetter healthcare, more job security. Now, a new study from the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, adds another benefit to that list: richer children, once they’re all grown up.

According to the study, people between the ages of 26 and 37 who are working full time and whose parents did not go to college and were not in a union earn an average of $39,000 today. But a very similar group of people—everything the same except that they had one parent who was in a union—those people are earning $46,000. (The difference all but disappears when comparing people who had a parent who was a college graduate.)

Read more from The Atlantic.