Majorities of Americans see the large reduction in the share of workers represented by unions over the past several decades as a bad thing for both the United States and its working people.

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to understand Americans’ views of the decline in U.S. union membership in recent decades.

For this analysis, we surveyed 3,554 U.S. adults from Aug. 4 to 10, 2025. Everyone who took part in this survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), a group of people recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses who have agreed to take surveys regularly. This kind of recruitment gives nearly all U.S. adults a chance of selection. Interviews were conducted either online or by telephone with a live interviewer. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education, presidential vote (among voters) and other factors. Read more about the ATP’s methodology.

Here are the questions used for this analysis, the topline and the survey methodology.