After documenting the long decline in private sector unionism over the last 50 years, we examine data on NLRB representation elections to determine if changes in the administration of the NLRA during the 1980s reduced the level
of organizing activity and success. While organizing activity sharply declined in
1981 (just before President Reagan's showdown with the air traffic controllers'
union, PATCO), we find little evidence that the changes in the administration of the NLRA later in the decade adversely affected the level of union organizing activity. We then present an accounting framework that decomposes the sharp
decline in the private-sector union membership rate into components due to 1) differential growth rates in employment between the union and nonunion sectors and 2) changes in the union new organization rate (through NLRB-supervised
representation elections). We find that most of the decline in the union membership rate is due to differential employment growth rates and that changes in union organizing activity had relatively little effect. Given that the differential employment growth rates are due largely to broader market and regulatory
forces, we conclude that the prospects are dim for a reversal of the downward
spiral of labor unions based on increased organizing activity.
Bruce Western
Rapid growth in the incarceration rate over the last two decades has made prison time a
routine event in the life course of young economically disadvantaged, black and Hispanic men.
Although incarceration may now have large effects on economic inequality, only a few studies
systematically examine the labor market experiences of ex-offenders. We review the
mechanisms that plausibly link incarceration to employment and earnings and discuss the
challenges of causal inference for a highly self-selected sample of criminal offenders. There is
little consensus about the labor market effects of a variety of justice system sanctions, but there
is consistent evidence for the negative effects of prison time on earnings, particularly among
older or white-collar offenders. The labor market effects of incarceration are not yet well
understood, but prior research suggests several promising avenues for future work.