With New York City being renowned as both a union town as well as the gateway for millions of immigrants, a new study shows that immigrant New Yorkers make up an essential portion of the city’s unions. Researchers affiliated with the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies discovered that immigrant New Yorkers make up the majority of union members in the five boroughs.
The report, titled The State of the Unions 2025: A Profile of Organized Labor in New York City, New York State, found that overall, the city’s union membership rate is higher than the national average, with 20.5% of workers in the city belonging to a union in 2024–25, more than double the national average of 9.9% in 2024.
According to the researchers, the high rate of union membership among immigrant workers demonstrates how vital immigrant workers have been in sustaining the organized labor movement in the city…