With Weak Unions Come Less Equal Wages, Study Suggests

Wage inequality has ballooned in the last 40 years, thanks in large part to the declining power of unions, according to a study published this month in the American Sociological Review, and reported by The New York Times.

Between the years 1973 and 2007, the study found that wage inequality rose 40 percent. In this same period, private sector union membership plummeted 34 to 8 percent among men and 16 to 6 percent among women. These drops explain one third of the increase of wage inequality among male workers and one fifth of the increased inequality among their female counterparts, the study concludes.