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Support for labor unions remains high and bipartisan—with 70 percent of Americans approving unions, three-fifths saying they strengthen the economy, and record numbers reporting that they want unions to have more influence in the United States. Surveys show that at least 35 percent of nonunion employees are interested in joining unions, and as many as 48 percent would unionize their workplaces if they could.
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Pre-apprenticeship programs, or apprenticeship readiness programs, have emerged as key pathways into skilled trade careers. By increasing the number of qualified workers eligible for registered apprenticeship programs, pre-apprenticeships combat skilled labor shortages in the construction industry. In Illinois, the two largest pre-apprenticeship programs are the Highway Construction Careers Training Program and the Illinois Works Pre-Apprenticeship Program.
Despite progress in workforce participation, a persistent gender gap in employment quality (EQ) continues to shape women’s economic and occupational experiences (Fana et al., 2023; Fuller & Kim, 2024; Kamerāde & Richardson, 2018; Pech et al, 2021; Stier & Yaish, 2014). This policy brief examines gender differences in perceived overall employment quality and other components of employment quality, including work schedules, employer support, promotion, and advancement opportunities.
Illinois is facing a housing shortage that has fueled increases in home prices and rental rates and negatively affected the economy. With home prices rising by 9 percent and asking rents increasing by as much as 10 percent across Illinois in 2024, this report explores the severity of the housing shortage and housing affordability issue in Illinois relative to other states—detailing the multitude of economic, regulatory, and demographic factors driving these trends while offering a range of options for policymakers and industry stakeholders to consider to stabilize the state’s housing market.
This report from the Project for Middle Class Renewal presents the first analysis of Illinois’s Workshare program using cross-sectional actual claimant data from the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES), covering the period from late 2020 to April 2024. It assesses the potential impact of Workshare participation on job retention, using national data from the Current Population Survey (CPS). Specifically, the analysis explores whether full-time workers are more likely to transition into part-time roles with their current employer—rather than face unemployment—when supported by Workshare benefits.
Registered apprenticeships are career training programs in which participants “earn while they learn” with tuition costs covered by employers or joint labor-management organizations, who gain access to domestic supply pools of skilled workers. Apprenticeship training is vital to the success of the construction industry, which accounts for 70 percent of apprenticeships in Wisconsin. While across Wisconsin, the number of active apprentices grew substantially over the past decade, this growth lagged neighboring states that maintained public policies that have been linked with strong apprenticeship systems.
In this report, researchers at the University of Illinois’ Project for Middle Class Renewal examine differences in access to quality jobs in Illinois by gender, education, and ethnicity. Using our Employment Quality in Illinois 2.0 (EQ-IL 2.0) survey data of over 5,000 workers across Illinois, we created a measure of job quality that utilizes 30 job quality components from our ten core dimensions of employment quality we defined in our EQ-IL 2.0 report. We aggregated the data by occupation and assigned a score for each component by quintile. We grouped occupations by composite scores into five groupings ranging from high-quality, to medium-high, medium, medium-low to low-quality jobs.
Our researchers at the University of Illinois Project for Middle Class Renewal (PMCR) have developed a comprehensive approach to identify the factors that determine Employment Quality in Illinois (EQ-IL 2.0). It develops ten dimensions, each with sub-components, including both subjective and objective measures.
Following up on EQ-Il 1.0, we use a large survey collected in 2023 of 5,600 employed in Illinois to identify the contribution of a vast array of worker-reported working conditions toward explaining workers’ own ratings of the quality of their employment.
Read full report here. Permanent link here.
In 2022 Illinois became the fifth state to pass a Constitutional Amendment protecting the rights of workers. Unlike other states, however, Illinois voters passed a ballot measure to create what is arguably the strongest constitutional provisions protecting collective bargaining in the country. PMCR presents two thought pieces on the Amendment.
The first paper, by Professor Matt Finkin, includes an explanation of the need for a statute or constitutional right situating worker collective representation in the political climate that has prevailed in the country since labor-hostile Republican legislatures took control of state houses in 2010. The second is a brief commentary by Dave Amerson, Staff Attorney for the Illinois Police Benevolent and Protective Association. Amerson is not hedging. The Worker Rights Amendment is a game changer or in his opinion, it should be.
Read the full piece here.
Welcome to our first fact sheet documenting strikes by union and nonunion workers across Illinois. These data are derived from the Labor Action Tracker, a project started in 2021 that comprehensively documents strike activity in the United States. As of January 2024, the Labor Action Tracker is a joint project between Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations and the University of Illinois’ School of Labor and Employment Relations.
In this report you will find important information about strikes in Illinois between 2021 and 2023. Workers in Illinois organized 77 strikes involving approximately 25,820 participants from 2021 to 2023. Major findings include an uptick in the number of strikes from 2021 to 2023, with a particularly large increase in the number of workers on strike in 2023. More strikes occurred in the accommodation and food services sector than any other industry, though more workers were on strike in manufacturing than any other industry.
Read the full report here.