Yesterday was Labor Day and Democrats used the holiday to celebrate labor unions.

Our esteemed UP economist Richard Vedder of Ohio University has just completed a study for us, finding that workers are scrambling to get out of forced-union states. Over the years 2020 to 2025, Census Bureau and Labor Department statistics reveal that in 23 lightly unionized states (where fewer than 8% of workers were union members in 2023), there was an astonishing net domestic in-migration of 3,520,000 Americans – nearly two thousand a day.

Where did they come from? Mostly from states with a large union presence (12% or more union workers). The heavy-union states suffered a net loss of 3,870,000 Americans to net domestic migration. There was a smaller in-migration to the states that are in-between.

People move to new locales for many reasons – weather, housing, family, cost of living, jobs, lower taxes, etc. But if unions are so popular, why are the states where they are strongest losing so many workers and families?

Maybe the answer is: all the job growth is in the non-union dominated states.