Picketing May Have Peaked but Union Strike Totals Remain High

Unions led fewer strikes against US employers last year than in 2022 or 2023, according to Bloomberg Law labor data. But the 236 walkouts called in 2024 still represent the third-highest annual total in almost two decades, suggesting that the post-pandemic trend of labor unrest is still far from over.

After unions initiated only 86 strikes in shutdown-riven 2020, strikes took place with increasing frequency in the ensuing three years—from 164 in 2021 to 317 in 2022 to 356 in 2023—as workers sought to assert more control over their job security and compensation. It took until 2024 for the ...