Today's Labor Force

According to the BLS in Major Work Stoppages in 2005 (March 2, 2006), the number of work stoppages (strikes) involving 1,000 or more workers has decreased dramatically since the 1980s. In 1974, 424 work stoppages resulted in 31.8 million days idle. (This figure is calculated by multiplying the number of workers times the number of days they were on strike.) For most of the remainder of the 1970s, there were about 200 to 300 work stoppages per year.

This changed significantly during the 1980s. The last year for which more than 100 work stoppages were counted was 1981, when 729,000 workers were idle 16.9 million days during 145 strikes. The BLS reported that the number of work stoppages fell to only forty in 1988, rising slightly to forty-four in 1990, with 185,000 workers idle for 5.9 million days. There were only seventeen strikes in 1999, affecting 73,000 workers, the lowest numbers up to that time since the government began keeping records on strikes in 1947. The early 2000s have seen continued low numbers of work stoppages. Major Work Stoppages in 2005 reported fourteen work stoppages in 2003 that affected 129,000 workers and resulted in 4.1 million lost days. In 2004, 3.3 million idle days resulted from seventeen work stoppages affecting 171,000 workers, and in 2005 twenty-two work stoppages involved 100,000 workers and resulted in 1.7 million idle days. The BLS figures do not distinguish between worker-initiated strikes and stoppages that result from employer-initiated lockouts.

TABLE 1.17 Employees on nonfarm payrolls by industry sector and selected industry detail, selected months, 2004–05