Labor unions are as popular now as they were in 1965, a new Gallup poll finds.
Unions have increased in popularity during the last 20 years from a 2009 low of only 48% of people approving of them to 71% now, the highest since 1965, according to the data.
Gallup conducted the poll on work and education Aug. 1-23 with a random sample of 1,006 adults aged 18 and up through all 50 states and has a sampling error of +/- 4 percentage points, according to the organization.
According to Gallup, unions have fluctuated in support since being tracked in 1936 between a high of 75% approval in 1953 and around 55% for several years in the early 1980s, resting in the mid 60% range for most of the period.
Popularity dipped dramatically during the recession in 2007-09, falling almost 10 percentage points from 59% to a record low of 48%, before trending steadily upward to its current support level of 71%.
Increasing support follows a large 57% increase in union election petitions reported to the National Labor Relations Board in the first six months of 2021, Gallup reported.
The increase may also be tied to a string of labor union victories in companies like Starbucks and Amazon.
According to the survey, 16% of Americans live in a house that has a union member.
The New York Times reported in May that two successful union votes at two Starbucks locations in Buffalo, New York, sparked workers in 20 other stores nationwide to file for union elections, while a brief victory at a Staten Island Amazon warehouse in April led to the workers group withdrawing its petition.
According to the report, the differing success rates might be due to the scale of the individual operations; with fewer employees at a single Starbucks location than the hundreds that work at the average Amazon warehouse, it's easier to get a majority of workers in smaller locations to vote to unionize.
"Amazon is so much harder a nut to crack," John Logan, a labor studies professor at San Francisco State University, told the Times by email.
Among people in a union, the Gallup survey found that 40% believe union membership is "extremely important," compared to 10% believing it is not important at all.
Among the reasons for joining a union, most members surveyed said they joined for better pay and benefits, and employee representation and rights, at 65% and 57%, respectively.
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