From Axios:
Workers have a lot of leverage right now — from highly paid AI engineers to teachers, delivery drivers and auto workers.
- Why it matters: More than ever, employees are getting what they want — thanks in part to a very tight labor market, Axios' Emily Peck writes.
🧮 By the numbers: The U.S. unemployment rate has been below 4% for 21 straight months — the longest stretch since the late-1960s, as former Fed economist Claudia Sahm wrote this weekend.
- The share of prime-age workers (25-54) who are employed is hovering at a 22-year high.
What's happening: With fewer workers available, companies have less leverage over employees — they can't rely on an unlimited pool of labor to keep things running. That's why you're seeing growth in real wages this year. Workers in many fields can demand raises.
- It also helps explain why offices aren't filled back up with workers. Many of those working remotely have the power to just … not go back in five days a week.
The tight labor market is also the backdrop to all the union action we've been reporting on for the past year or so — why UPS drivers got a great deal without striking and UAW workers just ratified the best contract they've seen in decades.
- “Workers have more power than they ever have,” said Catherine Creighton, who worked for decades as a union-side labor lawyer, at a talk about the UAW contract on Monday.
What's next: Demographics may keep things tight for the long haul, as the population ages and politics hold back immigration growth.