Labor Action Tracker 2024

Download the 2024 Annual Report
 

Suggested citation: Iyer, D. K., O’Brien, L., Han, H., and Kallas, J. (2025). Labor Action Tracker: Annual Report 2024. ILR School, Cornell University & LER School, University of Illinois.

Acknowledgments
A special thanks goes to the Cornell-ILR School and University of Illinois LER School for funding our project and the entire Labor Action Tracker research team for putting in the hours to document strike activity. We would also like to thank Betsy Wiggers, Dave Yantorno, Mary Catt, Adam Allington, Jeff Amaral, David DeMello, and Nell Madigan for their excellent design and promotion of our report.

Introduction

With sustained work stoppages in several sectors amidst a presidential election, 2024 marked another important year for the U.S. labor movement. We are excited to release the fourth Labor Action Tracker Annual Report, in which we present key findings from our 2024 work stoppage data.

Increasing considerably over the past three years, strikes are an important tool for workplace and labor activism. Since funding cuts by the Reagan administration in the early-1980s, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has only documented work stoppages involving 1,000 or more workers that last at least an entire shift. By only recording large work stoppages, official data sources exclude the vast majority of strike activity, posing issues for policymakers, practitioners, and scholars in determining the extent of workplace conflict across the country. In this report, we follow the lead of the BLS and document work stoppages, which include both strikes and lockouts. You can follow our project and view our monthly reports of strike activity on X (formerly Twitter) @ILRLaborAction and Bluesky @Laboraction.bsky.social.

Methodology

This report is based on data we collected on strikes and lockouts in 2024. Detailed information on our project’s methodology can be found here. Further details specific to the methodology for this report can be found throughout this document. We generate all our data on strikes from several public sources, including existing work stoppage databases, news articles, and social media posts. We follow rigorous verification protocols to ensure that a strike did in fact occur and to collect data on several related variables, including, but not limited to, the size, duration, industry, and demands of a strike. We link to the sources used to generate data on each strike on our site’s interactive map. We also collect data on labor protests but only provide summaries of work stoppages in this report because our count of protests is less comprehensive. In light of our rigorous protocols, we may underestimate the total amount of work stoppages as we cannot include events that do not have adequate verifiable information.

Updated 2023 findings

Our 2023 data now include 471 work stoppages. We added a one-day strike in Puerto Rico that brought the total up by 1 strike. We do not intend to further update 2023 findings.

Key findings from 2024

We documented 359 work stoppages (356 strikes and 3 lockouts) involving approximately 293,500 workers in 2024. These work stoppages resulted in 5,328,345.5 strike days.

The number of work stoppages in 2024 continued to exceed 2021 levels but were not as many as in 2022 or 2023. The number of work stoppages decreased by 23.8% in 2024 compared to 2023 and the approximate number of workers also decreased by 45.5%. The decline in the total number of strikes is overwhelmingly due to the decline in the number of one-day strikes, which is attributable in large part to the decrease in the number of strikes by Starbucks Workers United in 2024 as compared to 2022 and 2023. The five largest strikes of the year involved union members at Boeing, California State University, University of California, University of California Health, and the United States Maritime Alliance, totaling a little over half (~152,300) of all the workers engaged in strikes this year.

Some notable trends are emerging over the last four years from our data. In 2024, workers’ top three demands in work stoppages were better pay, improved health and safety and increased staffing, which remained the same the last two years. Also like in 2023, accommodation and food services still accounted for the largest number of work stoppages by any industry (23.6%), though less than the approximately one-third of all work stoppages this industry accounted for in 2022 and 2023. Third, unlike in 2023, the vast majority of striking workers came from educational services (32.7%) and the highest number of strike days from manufacturing (40%). Fourth, there was a slight increase in the percentage of work stoppages organized by nonunionized workers (24.8%) as compared to 2023. Fifth, in terms of region, the West accounted for more work stoppages (40.7%) and the overwhelming majority of workers involved in stoppages (66.8%) compared to any other region in the United States.

Overall, the total number of work stoppages, approximate number of workers and strike days did not reach 2023 levels, but the number of stoppages, workers involved, and strike days in 2024 exceeds those of 2021 and the number of workers involved, and strike days exceeds those of 2022.

Number of work stoppages and approximate number of workers involved in stoppages per month

In 2024, approximately 293,500 workers were involved in 359 work stoppages (356 strikes and 3 lockouts) totalling 5,328,345.5 strike days. The number of work stoppages stayed relatively consistent over the year before increasing considerably between August and September. The number of workers on strike spiked in September.

Labor action by industry

There were more work stoppages in the accommodation and food services industry than in any other industry, accounting for 23.6% of all work stoppages. Educational services involved the greatest number of workers (32.7%). About two fifths of all strike days were accounted for by the manufacturing industry.

Labor action by duration

About three fifths of all strikes in 2024 lasted less than 5 days. However, close to 18% of all workers who were striking were on the picket line for more than a month.

Labor action by size

A little over a third of all work stoppages involved fewer than 50 workers. Of the 293,489 workers who were involved in the work stoppages, a vast majority engaged in labor actions with more than 1000 workers.

Labor action by demand

The most common demands in 2024 were pay, improved health and safety and increased staffing.

Labor action by unionization status

Three fourths of work stoppages this year involved unionized workers (75.2%) while just around a fourth of all work stoppages were led by non-union workers (24.8%). Unionized workers comprised the vast majority of workers involved in work stoppages (98.4%) and strike days (99.3%) respectively.

Labor action by authorization status

A vast majority of all unionized strikes (92.8%) were authorized by a union compared to 4.8% that were unauthorized and 2.2% that were unknown. Authorized strikes overwhelmingly accounted for the number of workers (99.4%) and strike days (99.96%).

Labor action by region

Most work stoppages happened in the West as compared to other regions. The majority of workers who were on strike also came from the West. Similar to 2023, more work stoppages were found in the Midwest than the South.

Table 1
Monthly Work Stoppages and Approximate Number of Workers Involved in Work Stoppages

NOTE: A single work stoppage may appear in multiple months.

	Work Stoppages				Approximate Number of Workers
	2021	2022	2023	2024	2021	2022	2023	2024
January	11	42	38	29	5,107	53,067	16,306	38,349
February	15	35	47	42	3,134	24,089	5,865	5,826
March	23	50	53	44	9,253	18,741	77,031	12,779
April	33	49	53	49	15,905	28,657	19,153	13,186
May	32	52	60	55	12,512	14,248	25,149	44,484
June	38	41	57	47	13,417	7,571	46,270	40,570
July	41	54	54	39	15,070	8,576	199,307	12,018
August	25	60	68	55	7,546	16,516	200,192	37,530
September	36	57	76	59	12,379	33,590	210,551	91,202
October	61	65	66	49	32,313	13,555	305,136	89,698
November	61	47	72	42	90,561	58,321	201,125	91,217
December	44	49	53	37	21,794	59,649	24,312	21,376

 

Table 2
Industry of Work Stoppages 2024

NOTE: * In 2024, unlike in previous reports, we coded a single industry per strike. The only exception is a strike by 37,000 workers at University of California and University of California Health, which we coded in both the educational services and health care and social assistance industries.

Industry	Work Stoppages	Approximate Number of Workers	Strike Days
Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting	3	1,336	12,086
Utilities	1	14	266
Construction	7	3,800	148,800
Manufacturing	39	44,827	2,173,885
Wholesale Trade	12	1,432	70,696
Retail Trade	20	13,601	56,831
Transportation and Warehousing	33	28,680	113,214
Real Estate and Rental and Leasing	1	6	12
Professional, Scientific and Technical Services	1	170	850
Educational Services	47	96,111	1,030,449
Information	26	20,143	543,273
Health Care and Social Assistance	36	46,369	322,490
Arts, Entertainment and Recreation	12	3,525	425,068
Accommodation and Food Services	85	25,930	368,953.5
Public Administration	18	1,549	14,897
Administrative and Support and Waste Management	8	4,830	18,812
Other Services (except Public Administration)	11	1,166	27,763

Table 3
Duration of Work Stoppages

Work Stoppages per Interval

Interval	Less than or equal to 1 Day	2 to 4 Days	5 to 9 Days	10 to 30 Days	31 plus Days
	2021	104	54	25	53	42
2022	204	85	52	40	52
2023	197	96	51	59	67
2024	114	102	44	45	54

Approximate Number of Workers per Interval

Interval	Less than or equal to 1 Day	2 to 4 Days	5 to 9 Days	10 to 30 Days	31 plus Days
	2021	79,774	11,078	3,968	18,920	32,369
2022	23,226	23,924	87,698	27,126	66,792
2023	39,120	182,072	32,135	28,635	266,111
2024	49,285	105,120	19,222	66,077	53,785

Strike Days per Interval

Interval	Less than or equal to 1 Day	2 to 4 Days	5 to 9 Days	10 to 30 Days	31 plus Days
	2021	79,559	28,723	29,151	353,252	2,777,621
2022	22,734	70,105	583,452	416,675	3,354,622
2023	37,390	512,062	169,911	470,576	23,684,583
2024	48,097.5	277,920	107,568	1,080,713	3,814,047

Table 4
Approximate Size of Work Stoppages

Work Stoppages per Interval

Interval	2-49	50-99	100-249	250-999	1,000 plus
	2021	101	44	45	38	24
2022	197	49	66	55	37
2023	207	47	79	66	44
2024	126	44	60	66	38

Approximate Number of Workers per Interval

Interval	2-49	50-99	100-249	250-999	1,000 plus
	2021	2,101	3,067	6,221	17,933	110,950
2022	3,775	2,993	8,366	21,018	188,000
2023	3,797	3,189	11,239	30,243	490,115
2024	2,209	3,183	8,790	32,384	246,923

Strike Days per Interval

Interval	2-49	50-99	100-249	250-999	1,000 plus
	2021	30,547	54,133	96,318	740,688	2,347,500
2022	52,417	81,566	89,962	369,243	3,854,400
2023	69,331	121,227	201,430	366,348	24,116,186
2024	44,968	69,581.5	158,239	600,117	4,455,440

Table 5
Demands of Work Stoppages 2024

NOTE: A single work stoppage may have multiple demands. This list is not exhaustive.

Demand	Work Stoppages	Approximate Number of Workers	Strike Days
Pay	244	256,194	5,081,702.5
Health and Safety	92	75,440	768,900
Staffing	72	86,784	673,766
Healthcare	68	93,411	1,726,475
First Contract	45	17,594	691,396
Job Security	42	55,281	1,214,023
Scheduling	39	32,647	828,551
End to Anti-Union Retaliation	38	3,804	50,092
Retirement Benefits	33	69,726	2,751,399.5
Union Recognition	13	2,031	11,827
Racial Justice	11	1,807	66,921

Table 6
Union Versus Nonunion Work Stoppages

NOTE: *Unionized work stoppages also include lockouts **Nonunion means workers not unionized (without or prior to union recognition)

Work Stoppages per Interval

Interval	Unionized*	Nonunionized**
	2021	178	101
2022	302	131
2023	366	104
2024	270	89

Approximate Number of Workers per Interval

Interval	Unionized*	Nonunionized**
	2021	135,405	4,937
2022	217,278	6,874
2023	522,699	15,884
2024	288,999	4490

Strike Days per Interval

Interval	Unionized*	Nonunionized**
	2021	3,017,400	251,786
2022	4,370,681	76,907
2023	24,809,355	65,167
2024	5,294,339.5	33,826

Table 7
Authorized Versus Unauthorized Strikes

NOTE: This only includes strikes by unionized workers. By unionized, we mean after formal recognition of a union.

Strikes per Interval

Interval	Authorized	Unauthorized	Unknown
	2021	143	19	11
2022	266	25	4
2023	336	20	6
2024	248	13	6

Approximate Number of Workers per Interval

Interval	Authorized	Unauthorized	Unknown
	2021	125,971	2,032	5,317
2022	179,742	1,856	130
2023	520,489	1,056	401
2024	287,372	1,328	148

Strike Days per Interval

Interval	Authorized	Unauthorized	Unknown
	2021	2,962,798	3,451	51,151
2022	3,945,121	2,640	170
2023	24,789,106	1,687	931
2024	5,288,975.5	1,396	235

Table 8
Geographic Breakdown of Work Stoppages

Work Stoppages per Interval

Interval	Northeast	Midwest	South	West
	2021	70	63	72	84
2022	102	89	95	171
2023	127	110	95	178
2024	91	67	65	153

Approximate Number of Workers per Interval

Interval	Northeast	Midwest	South	West
	2021	22,888	20,900	12,104	83,752
2022	19,688	68,788	24,073	111,603
2023	122,794	61,124	35,112	319,552
2024	35,755.166	22,439.5	39,114.666	196,179.666

Strike Days per Interval

Interval	Northeast	Midwest	South	West
	2021	1,569,124	592,754	869,018	254,695
2022	394,522	821,108	714,873.5	2,517,084.5
2023	10,687,464	1,801,978	499,518	11,885,562
2024	970,451.833	352,045.5	693,949.333	3,311,898.833

View 2021, 2022 and 2023 Annual Reports