Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, REPORTS—UCLA and UC Berkeley report on the health of California’s unions, (Aug 28, 2025)

By Patricia K. Ruiz, J.D.

The report analyzes the most recent publicly available data on union density, member demographics, and labor organizing activity in California.

Union density in California has held steady for more than two decades, in defiance of national trends of long-term decline and the hobbling of federal regulatory agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board, by the second Trump administration, according to a report from the UCLA Institute for Research and Labor and Employment (IRLE) and the UC Berkeley Labor Center. The report, titled State of the Unions: California Labor in 2024, presents a profile of unions in California, including data on union membership, union elections, and strike activity, and serves as a benchmark to measure the impact of changes in labor policy, worker power, and the health of organized labor.

Union density. In 2024, one in six workers in California (2.67 million) was represented by a labor union—more workers than in any other state and eighth in the nation in union density—and these union members reflect the California’s diversity. The report further states that industries more prevalent or exclusively in the public sector tend to have stronger collective bargaining rights and higher union density. Further, some industries have a much higher concentration of union representation than others. In total, almost 60 percent of all union-represented workers are employed in education, public administration, or health care, but only about a quarter of the state’s workforce is employed in those industries.

Demographics. According to the report, union members are slightly older than the California workforce overall. The typical union member in California is in their mid-40s, a person of color born in the U.S., and has obtained educational experiences beyond high school. California union members are equally likely to be male or female; however, some groups are underrepresented or undercounted in public data. The majority of union members are workers of color.

Importance of union representation. A large majority of California workers choose union representation when given the opportunity to vote in a union election. In 2024, unions filed petitions for more than 300 elections covering approximately 25,000 workers, who voted for union representation in more than 83 percent of those elections. This represents a slightly higher success rate than elections across the nation as a whole. Across many sectors of the economy, state labor policy remains critical for worker protections, such as sectoral bargaining, heat safety, and workplace technology regulations. The report states that California workers and unions have a major interest in state-level policy.

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