Key Findings

• Union executives are prioritizing recruitment. The fastest-growing category of public sector labor legislation expands collective bargaining into new workplaces.
• On the strength of these new laws, union executives are slowly replacing their membership losses since 2018. From 2018 to 2025, the country’s four largest government unions report a net decline in membership of 87,919, or 1.3 percent. However, they also report a collective gain of 232,502 members, or 3.5 percent since 2024.
• This report awards full letter-grade increases to Idaho (now A) and Louisiana (now B) due to their adoption of pro-worker labor reforms this past legislative session. However, the drops in grades—Nebraska (D), Nevada (D), and Rhode Island (F)—are the result of these states prioritizing union executives over workers and enacting laws helping unions recruit, politick, organize, and strike.
• Thirteen states now have an “A” or “A+” grade—up from twelve in the previous edition of this report—while six states earned an “F”—up from five over the same time period. Overall, the research finds 25 states fall below a “C.”

State Grades

More in-depth state profiles are available in the full report.

GRADE	NUMBER OF STATES	STATES
A+	7	Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas
A	6	Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, West Virginia, and Wisconsin
B	10	Alabama, Arizona, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming
C	2	Missouri and South Dakota
D	15	Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Vermont
D-	4	Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New Mexico
F	6	California, Illinois, Maryland, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington