In 2021, approximately 140,000 workers in the United States took part in a work stoppage, including 265 strikes and five lockouts — for a total of 3,269,186 strike days. The numbers are compiled in a new report from the Labor Action Tracker, a recent project by Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

While the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) only tracks work stoppages in which 1,000 or more people participate, the new report captures data from smaller work stoppages as well, adding to the picture of workplace action in the pandemic’s second year. As the report details, about half of the work stoppages involved fewer than 100 workers, though the majority of the 140,000 workers took part in stoppages captured by BLS data, i.e., ones involving 1,000 or more workers.

The most surprising finding is that of the 265 work stoppages last year, eighty-seven (amounting to 32.8 percent of the total) were by nonunion workers. It is much harder to organize a stoppage without a formal union’s durable infrastructure, and yet, as the report shows, many workers did so. These strikes tended to be much smaller than those by union workers, and in total accounted for a miniscule 3.4 percent of the 140,000 workers involved in any work stoppages. But despite their small numbers, these stoppages include the likes of several walkouts by Amazon workers at a particularly mobilized distribution center in Chicago, actions significant by dint of the workers’ location in the economy, if not their numbers.