Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic — and politicians’ ham-fisted response to it — dealt a cruel blow to employees and businesses in early 2020, working-age Americans have been fleeing states where the Right to Work isn’t protected in greater numbers than ever before.
Data from the U.S. Census Bureau confirm that the stampede of workers and their families out of Big Labor’s stronghold states continued in 2024 and 2025, long after COVID-19-related restrictions on business activities and school lockdowns had ceased to be active problems.
More than ever, employees’ “foot voting” is demonstrating they strongly prefer Right to Work.
Unfortunately, Democratic politicians such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries couldn’t care less. An increasingly vocal, though small, faction of Republicans mimics their disdain for citizens’ preferences regarding labor policy.
The disconnect between rank-and-file workers and pro-union Republicans such as Josh Hawley of Missouri and Bernie Moreno of Ohio is especially disturbing. Such politicians’ avowed goal is to reconstitute the Republican Party, which is today overwhelmingly supportive of Right to Work, into a party that largely agrees with Democratic politicians’ support for labor special privileges over the individual freedom of the employee. If Hawley, Moreno and Co. get their way, pro-Right to Work citizens will routinely be denied a meaningful choice at the ballot box.
The reality is, when they have a choice, working-age people prefer not to live in forced-unionism states. Census data make that very clear.
From July 2020 to July 2025, for example, the population of individuals in their peak-earning years (age 35-54) in the 26 states that continuously had Right-to-Work laws on the books (which bar the termination of employees for refusal to pay union dues) grew by 5.7 percent, or 2.2 million. In both percentage and absolute terms, that increase is five times as great as peak-earning-year population growth in states that have never had Right-to-Work protections.
Six of the seven states with the greatest percentage gains in their peak-earning-year population from 2020 to 2025 have Right-to-Work laws on the books. And 10 of the 12 states with the greatest absolute gains in peak-earning-year population are Right to Work.
Census figures indicate forced-dues states lost 881,000 “peak earners” to domestic out-migration from 2020 to 2025 and 96,000 from 2024 to 2025 alone. If the current trend continues, these states are poised to lose a cumulative net 1.4 million workers to Right-to-Work states from 2020 to 2030.
The obvious and correct explanation for the population shift is that working men and women find that they cannot provide as well for their families in forced-union states as in Right-to-Work states.
As a National Institute for Labor Relations Research analysis shows (based on data from the Commerce Department and the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center, a state government agency), in 2025, cost-of-living-adjusted disposable personal income per capita was (on average) nearly $3,500 higher in Right-to-Work states than in other states.
Once you are aware that Right-to-Work states enjoyed, as of last year, a purchasing-power advantage over pro-union states equivalent to $14,000 a year for a family of four, it shouldn’t be at all surprising that families are flooding to Right-to-Work states.
On the other hand, it defies common sense to believe that people who get the vast majority of their income from their jobs would lopsidedly favor living in states where they are worse off over states where they are better off. Yet that’s effectively what union-appeasing politicians like Josh Hawley tacitly assume.
Meanwhile, the powerful Teamster officials with whom they’ve forged an alliance explicitly claim, again and again, that corralling workers into unions somehow makes them better off.
Reprinted with permission from DC Journal by Stan Greer.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
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