Economic effects of labor unions

Abstract

To analyze the economic impacts of labor unions I chose GDP, Unemployment, Poverty, and Income Inequality to use as my economic variables to measure the impacts of the changes in the labor union participation. I chose to do this analysis domestically, so I did my calculations with data collected annually from each of the fifty states (including Washington DC) for the years of 2000-2016. I was able to find this information for each of my economic variables and I used this data to run some regressions. After doing these regressions a significant causal relationship was found between an increase in labor unions, and a decrease in income inequality and poverty. I was unable to find any negative impacts associated with an increase in labor unions that some models would have suggested that I would find. More calculations should be done because my data is limited to the last 17 years.