The Fact
In 2025, median weekly earnings for full-time wage and salary workers who were union members were $1,404, compared with $1,174 for nonunion workers—a $230 weekly difference. BLS cautions that this raw comparison does not control for occupation, industry, age, geography, or other worker characteristics.
What This Means
Union members as a group received substantially higher weekly pay in 2025. The number is a real earnings difference between the two groups; by itself it is not a causal estimate of how much joining a union would raise any individual worker's pay.
Sources
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Union Members — 2025, Table 2, median weekly earnings by union affiliation.