A. Philip Randolph, the influential twentieth-century labor and civil rights leader, would no doubt have mixed feelings about the state of labor in the United States today. On the one hand, union density has declined precipitously over the last half-century, from roughly one-third to one-tenth of all workers. On the other hand, there’s been an upsurge of union organizing in recent years, particularly among black and brown workers.

As the leader of the first successful black labor union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Randolph was committed to organizing black workers, particularly at a time when many unions excluded African Americans. By the 1960s, most unions had welcomed black workers into their ranks, although it took a few more decades for these workers to rise into positions of union leadership. Today, black workers have the highest unionization rates — 12.8 percent, compared with 11.2 percent for white workers, 10 percent for Latino workers, and 9.2 percent for Asian-American workers.

A new report shows that the number of American workers represented by a union increased by two hundred thousand, to a total of more than sixteen million, between 2021 and 2022. The entire increase was among workers of color. No, that’s not an exaggeration. The number of black workers represented by a union increased by 142,000, Latino workers by 101,000, and Asian-American workers by 64,000. Meanwhile, the number of unionized white workers declined by 31,000.