The Decline of U.S. Labor Unions: Import Competition and NLRB Elections

Abstract

Why has private sector union participation fallen away so much in the United States since the late 1950s? Featuring an improved dataset on National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) representation elections, I present evidence that import penetration accounts for approximately 40 percent of the decline in union formation for U.S. manufacturing. This estimate translates to 4.6 percent of the decline in private sector union density. The effect is driven by trade with low-income countries and, to some extent, other high-income countries. China is not a factor early on, but their strong import growth since 2000 can account for about 12 percentage points of the total decline.