On August 25, 2025, the Inland Empire Labor & Community Center , UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) and the UC Berkeley Labor Center, released State of the Unions: California Labor in 2024. The report provides a snapshot of the California labor movement at a time of dramatic political and economic shifts nationwide.

Jesús “Chuy” Flores, David Mickey-Pabello, and Ellen Reese of UC Riverside’s Inland Empire Labor and Community Center (IELCC) co-authored the report showing that the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario region has the second largest share of union-represented workers in California.

This is significant for the Inland Empire’s growing Labor movement as we are home to 15.1% of all union workers in the state. At 412,049 union-represented members, the Inland Empire ranks between two critical regions in the California economy, the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim and San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont metropolitan areas.

Other key findings include:

• Union density in California has held steady for over two decades in defiance of national trends of long-term decline. In 2024, one in six California workers (16.3% or  2.67 million) was represented by a labor union.

• California’s union members represent the state’s diversity. The typical union member in California is in their mid-40s, a person of color born in the United States, and has obtained educational experiences beyond high school. Union members are equally likely to be male or female. However, some groups are underrepresented in labor’s ranks, and others are likely undercounted in public data.
• Given the opportunity to vote in a union election, a large majority of California workers choose union representation. In 2024, unions filed petitions for over 300 elections covering nearly 25,000 workers. Workers voted for union representation in over 83% of those elections, a slightly higher success rate than the nation as a whole.
• State labor policy remains critical for worker protections across many sectors of the economy. From sectoral bargaining to heat and workplace technology regulations, California workers and unions have a major interest in state-level policy.

To read the full report, click on the “report” button below.