For decades, the narrative surrounding organized labor in the United States has been one of decline. Union membership has plummeted by over 60% since 1970, and worker participation in strikes saw an even more dramatic 90% drop. The watershed moment came in 1981 when President Reagan's decision to fire striking air traffic controllers set a precedent for harsh responses to labor actions. This decline led many to declare American unions "basically dead."
However, recent years have witnessed a resurgence of labor activism, with teachers at the forefront, challenging these long-held assumptions. In a new NBER working paper co authored with Matthew Kraft (Brown University) and Matthew Steinberg (Accelerate), I examine the impact of teacher strikes on compensation, working conditions, student achievement and productivity. Our results show that teachers have come to play a leading role in American labor activism, defying decades of declining union power.
Teachers at the Vanguard of a New Labor Movement
We decided to study teacher strikes for a few important reasons.
First, public school teachers make up a significant portion of our country’s union membership and of the workforce as a whole. Around 5% of the college-educated workforce are public school teachers amounting to over 3.7 million educators nationwide. Nearly one in five union members (18%) is a public school teacher making them a significant force in organized labor.
Second, teachers have been at the forefront of recent labor actions. In 2018, the "RedForEd" movement resulted in the largest work stoppages in a generation, with public school teachers accounting for at least 78% of workers participating in large-scale actions.
Finally, the existing landscape of data on teacher strikes is incomplete. In 1982, the Bureau of Labor Statistics stopped collecting data on strikes with fewer than 1,000 employees. This means they’re missing a lot of teacher strikes: 97% of school districts employ fewer than 1,000 teachers. Since 2021, the ILR Labor Action Tracker has been doing amazing work, tracking even smaller strikes in real time and becoming the definitive source of these data over the last few years. However, we needed data on strikes from even before 2021 to estimate their effects.
To address this data gap, we developed a search procedure and reviewed roughly 90,000 news articles to uncover evidence of 772 teacher strikes between 2007 and 2023. Strikes have been particularly prevalent in the West, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwest regions.
Causes and Impacts of Teacher Strikes
The data we collected helps us to better understand where and when teacher strikes occur and their impact. A typical year sees about twelve to thirteen teacher strikes. On average, there are about 89 days of canceled school due to teacher strikes annually. Most strikes are brief. Roughly two-thirds of strikes end after five days or fewer, and the median strike is two days long. Cumulatively though, teacher strikes have affected roughly 11.5 million students over the past 16 years, leading to the cancellation of a total of 3,403 days of school.
Teacher strikes are driven by a variety of issues with the most common being compensation. Nine out of ten strikes (89%) involve teachers advocating for higher wages and better benefits. Education quality issues also play a significant role driving 59% of strikes where teachers demand improvements such as smaller class sizes, better school facilities, increased educational expenditures, and more non-instructional support staff. Additionally, about 10% of strikes — particularly those that are coordinated across districts (like the 2018 "RedForEd" strikes) — focus on common good issues that extend beyond the classroom, such as advocating for broader societal changes like immigration reform and affordable housing.
When comparing districts that experience strikes to those that do not, we find that strikes are more likely to occur in larger, urban and suburban districts that face lower levels of educational spending. These striking districts often serve more diverse and economically disadvantaged student populations and have higher student-teacher ratios.
When we examine the effects of teacher strikes, we find that they tend to achieve their goals producing notable improvements in compensation, class sizes, and support staff expenditures. By the fifth year after a strike, annual teacher compensation increases by an average of $10,000, or 8%. Additionally, class sizes decrease slightly, by about half a student, on average, and expenditures on non-instructional staff compensation rise by approximately 7%. Importantly, these improvements are funded through increased district expenditures, largely supported by increased state revenues, rather than through budget reallocations. This indicates that strikes are effective not only in winning immediate concessions, but also in expanding the overall resources allocated to education.
Contrary to common concerns about the potential negative impact of teacher strikes on student learning, the study found no significant adverse effects on student achievement in the five years following a typical strike. Only the longer strikes—those lasting two or more weeks, which account for about 10% of all strikes—showed a temporary decline in math achievement during the strike year and the year after. These findings challenge the narrative that teacher strikes harm student outcomes, highlighting that the length of a strike is a crucial factor. Notably, previous research showing negative effects often focused on strikes outside the U.S. where strikes tend to last much longer than those in the U.S.
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Implications for the Labor Movement
The resurgence of teacher strikes carries profound lessons for the broader labor movement.
Teacher strikes have proven to be powerful tools for advancing worker interests, even in states where they are explicitly illegal. Teacher strikes are illegal in 37 states, but illegality is not enough to deter teacher strikes. For example, thousands of teachers prominently chose to go on strike in 2018 and 2019, despite strikes being illegal in nearly every one of the “#RedforEd” states (e.g., Arizona, Kentucky, Oklahoma, North Carolina, and West Virginia).
The effectiveness of teacher strikes over the past 16 years contrasts sharply with the decline in strike effectiveness generally during the 1980s and 1990s. This demonstrates that public-sector workers can effectively use collective action to influence policy and resource allocation.
The "RedForEd" movement showed that teacher strikes can garner significant public support, and even increase parents’ interest in joining a union, challenging the notion that strikes alienate the community.
While compensation remains a key issue in teacher strikes, the focus on working conditions and common good issues shows the potential for strikes to address broader societal concerns.
A New Chapter in Labor Activism?
Can a revival of teacher strikes mark a new chapter in American labor history? This research on teacher strikes demonstrates that collective action remains a potent force for change, even in an era of declining union membership. For labor organizers across sectors, the lessons from teacher strikes may offer valuable insights:
- The importance of framing demands in terms of both worker and community benefits
- The ability to achieve gains while reducing harm to innocent third parties (like children) through short strikes that invite community participation
- The potential for coordinated actions across multiple workplaces or regions
- The power of leveraging public opinion and political pressure alongside traditional bargaining tactics
As we move forward, the success of teacher strikes may well serve as a blueprint for revitalizing worker power across the American economy. The education sector has shown that when workers stand together, they can achieve significant victories, even in the face of legal and political challenges.
