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When fewer people belong to unions and unions have less power, the impact goes beyond wages and job security. Those changes can hurt public health and make people more unhappy. Were economists who research labor and health issues. Those are two of the main findings of studies that we have conducted. More unionization, more happiness In the first study on this topic that we published in 2023, we found that increasing levels of union membership tends to make working-class people happier. We zeroed in on a question in the General Social Survey, which the University of Chicago makes available. It asks respondents to choose whether they are very happy, somewhat happy or not at all happy with their life. We found that, from 1993 to 2018, when the share of workers in counties along the borders of states with and without right-to-work laws who belong to unions rose by 1 percentage point, the average level of happiness for low-income residents moved 15% closer toward being very happya seemingly modest but noticeable change. Right-to-work laws let workers skip paying union dues when theyre employed by a company that has negotiated a contract with a labor union. In states without right-to-work laws, those dues are mandatory. As a result, right-to-work laws weaken unions ability to negotiate better working conditions and reduce the share of workers who belong to unions. But a higher rate of union membership didnt significantly affect the happiness of higher-income people. Right-to-work laws The first right-to-work laws were adopted by states in the 1940s. After a long lull, the pace picked up around 2000. These laws were in force in 26 states as of late 2025. Four of those states made the switch between 2001 and 2015: Oklahoma in 2001, Indiana in 2012, Michigan in 2012 and Wisconsin in 2015. We used data collected in these four states to conduct what is known in economics as an event studya research method that provides before-and-after pictures of a significant change that affects large numbers of people. Michigan repealed its right-to-work law in 2024, but our data is from 2001-2015, and Michigan became a right-to-work state during that period and remained one for the rest of that time. Less unionization, more opioid overdoses In a related working paper that we plan to publish in an upcoming edition of an academic journal, we looked into other effects of right-to-work laws. Specifically, we investigated whether, as more states adopted those laws, the gradual decline in union strength those statutes produce was contributing to an increase in opioid overdoses. We used a research technique called the synthetic control method to assess whether declining union power has affected the number of opioid overdoses. We drew our data from a variety of sources, including the Treatment Episode Data Set, the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions Multiple Cause of Death database, the Census Bureaus Current Population Survey, the union membership and coverage database, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illness and Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries. We found that both fatal and nonfatal opioid overdoses increased within six years of the enactment of right-to-work laws in all four of the states we studied. We primarily found a connection between opioid overdoses and right-to-work laws among men and male teens between ages 16 and 64making them of working agewith dangerous jobs, such as roofing or freight moving, and little job security. They were people who tend to feel more job stress because they dont have control over their work tasks and schedules. We didnt observe those same results for women or deaths from non-opioid drugs, such as cocaine. Lower levels of unionization are linked to weaker job security and reduced workplace protections, previous research has shown. Our work suggests these factors may play a role in increasing demand for opioids. Declining union membership The share of U.S. workers who belong to unions has fallen by half in the past four decades, declining from just over 20% in 1983 to a little under 10% in 2024. Because unions advocate for better and safer working conditions, they can raise wages and living standards for their members. Interestingly, some of these benefits can also extend to people who dont belong to unions. An opioid use disorder crisis has devastated communities across the U.S. for more than 25 years. The death toll from drug overdoses soared from 17,500 in 2000 to 105,000 in 2023. The number of overdose deaths did fall in 2024, to about 81,000, but it remains historically high. Most fatal drug overdoses since te crisis began have been caused by opioids. Throughout this crisis, government policies have focused largely on reducing the supply of prescription opioids, such as OxyContin, and illegal opioids, especially fentanyl, distributed outside the health care system. Causes of despair Despite successful interventions to shut down pill millsclinics that prescribe opioids without a valid medical reasonand expand access to prevention and treatment, drug overdoses remain a leading cause of death. And we believe that our findings support results from earlier studies that determined despair is not just an emotional or biological reactionit can also be a response to social and economic conditions. We are continuing to research the connections between union membership and public health. The next question we are working on is whether a decline in union membership can have a multigenerational impact, going beyond the workers employed today and affecting the lives of their children and grandchildren. Samia Islam is a professor of economics at Boise State University and Kelly Chen is an associate professor of economics at Boise State University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
Quantum computing insiders, investors, and skeptics have been waiting on an announcement from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that has enormous implications for the future of the industry: the list of companies that have survived Stage A of the agencys Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI) and are advancing to Stage B. The QBI was launched in July 2024 to rigorously verify and validate whether any quantum computing approach can achieve utility-scale operation by 2033, according to DARPA. In essence, the QBI seeks to determine if a quantum computer technology is worth pursuingif its benefits will be greater than the effort and resources it takes to pursue them. For a technology that could produce world-changing feats but remains far from maturityand into which billions of investment dollars have been flowing in recent monthsthe QBI validation is profound. The QBIs first judgments, announced yesterday, reconfigure the competitive landscape, bolstering some powerful incumbents and boosting lesser-known players and outlier approaches. They also delivered a formidable gut punch to a couple of industry pioneers. QBI is not a competition to narrow the field to a few winners. Rather, the aim is to evaluate each companys approach on its own merits DARPA said in a press release. The agency makes clear that multiple participants could demonstrate a path to an industrially useful quantum computer, or perhaps none of them. The new quantum computing playing field During Stage A of QBI, companies had six months to provide detailed technical concepts that showed feasibility for creating utility-scale quantum systems. The initial stage included 18 companiesIBM, Quantinuum, Atom Computing, Alice & Bob, IonQ, Rigetti, and Xanadu, among them. These companies, which were eligible for up to $1 million in funding, represent a variety of approaches to building a quantum computer, down to their technology for constructing qubits, the fundamental building blocks of a quantum computation. The 11 companies that were selected to move onto Stage B are pursuing different systems. Two companies, Atom Computing and QuEra Computing, use neutral atom qubits. IonQ and Quantinuum both use so-called trapped ions. Several companies use silicon spin qubits. IBM is pursuing superconducting qubits. And Xanadu uses a photonics-based qubit. Now, moving into Stage B, they will be asked for a comprehensive research and development plan capable of realizing their quantum computer, with an assessment of the risks associated with the plan, and their mitigation approaches. In Stage C, companies will work with the government to verify and validate that their utility-scale quantum computer concept can be constructed as designed and operated as intended. DARPA anticipates that additional teams will advance through stages A, B, and C. And companies have entered the evaluation process on varying timelinesGoogle Quantum AI, for example, joined lateresulting in staggered advancement across stages. Two companies, Microsoft and PsiQuantum, have already advanced to Stage C in a separate but related DARPA initiative called Underexplored Systems for Utility-Scale Quantum Computing (US2QC). IBMs progression to Stage B of DARPAs Quantum Benchmarking Initiative is a firm validation of IBMs approach to delivering a large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer, said IBMs director of research Jay Gambetta in a company press release. As the industry advances, we look forward to working with DARPA as they continue an unbiased review of potential viable strategies across the field. It’s not that we got in that matters as much as making sure we didnt not get in, says Christian Weedbrook, CEO and founder of Toronto-based Xanadu Quantum Technologies. A lot of late nights the team was pushing themselves, and I said, we don’t want a black mark across us now for getting the stage B. One of the great things about [the process] is that it really forced us in different teams to work harder together. Earlier this week, Xanadu announced plans to go public via SPAC, which Weedbrook expects to happen in the first or second quarter of 2026. This would be the only way, currently at least, that investors can invest in a photonics-based approach, he says. Soul searching, and new funding Even if you are able to do months of diligence, nothing really beats the team of scientists and researchers from across the [Department of Defense] labs, the national labs, and the intelligence and universities ecosystem that DARPA has assembled to do this diligence, says Prineha Narang, a professor of physical sciences and electrical and computer engineering at UCLA and a partner at deep-tech venture firm DCVC. This is far more than any VC or anyone on the private capital side could do. Narang says that companies that didnt make it to Stage B should take it very seriously. It doesn’t mean that they dont have an approach that could eventually work, but just that today they couldn’t articulate and present [that plan] to DARPA, she adds. The Stage A contenders that didnt make the cut include Alice & Bob, which uses innovative cat qubits, Atlantic Quantum, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Oxford Ionics, and Rigetti Computing, which was founded in 2013 and is the first full-stack, universal pure-play quantum computing company. On the other hand, Narang notes that a few companies that made it to Stage B have term sheets that call out the QBI outcome as a condition for the next round of funding. Several investments and deals are now in flight, she says. [They are] happening, and happening faster than the usual pace of these.
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E-Commerce
President Donald Trump is adjusting his messaging strategy to win over voters who are worried about the cost of living with plans to emphasize new tax breaks and show progress on fighting inflation.The messaging is centered around affordability, and the push comes after inflation emerged as a major vulnerability for Trump and Republicans in Tuesday’s elections, in which voters overwhelmingly said the economy was their biggest concern.Democrats took advantage of concerns about affordability to run up huge margins in the New Jersey and Virginia governor races, flipping what had been a strength for Trump in the 2024 presidential election into a vulnerability going into next year’s midterm elections.White House officials and others familiar with their thinking requested anonymity to speak for this article in order to not get ahead of the president’s actions. They stressed that affordability has always been a priority for Trump, but the president plans to talk about it more, as he did Thursday when he announced that Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk would reduce the price of their anti-obesity drugs.“We are the ones that have done a great job on affordability, not the Democrats,” Trump said at an event in the Oval Office to announce the deal. “We just lost an election, they said, based on affordability. It’s a con job by the Democrats.”The White House is keeping up a steady drumbeat of posts on social media about prices and deals for Thanksgiving dinner staples at retailers such as Walmart, Lidl, Aldi and Target.“I don’t want to hear about the affordability, because right now, we’re much less,” Trump told reporters Thursday, arguing that things are much better for Americans with his party in charge.“The only problem is the Republicans don’t talk about it,” he said. The outlook for inflation is unclear As of now, the inflation outlook has worsened under Trump. Consumer prices in September increased at an annual rate of 3%, up from 2.3% in April, when the president first began to roll out substantial tariff hikes that suddenly burdened the economy with uncertainty. The AP Voter Poll showed the economy was the leading issue in Tuesday’s elections in New Jersey, Virginia, New York City and California.Grocery prices continue to climb, and recently, electricity bills have emerged as a new worry. At the same time, the pace of job gains has slowed, plunging 23% from the pace a year ago.The White House maintains a list of talking points about the economy, noting that the stock market has hit record highs multiple times and that the president is attracting foreign investment. Trump has emphasized that gasoline prices are coming down, and maintained that gasoline is averaging $2 a gallon, but AAA reported Thursday that the national average was $3.08, about two cents lower than a year ago.“Americans are paying less for essentials like gas and eggs, and today the Administration inked yet another drug pricing deal to deliver unprecedented health care savings for everyday Americans,” said White House spokesman Kush Desai.Trump gets briefed about the economy by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other officials at least once a week and there are often daily discussions on tariffs, a senior White House official said, noting Trump is expected to do more domestic travel next year to make his case that he’s fixing affordability.But critics say it will be hard for Trump to turn around public perceptions on affordability.“He’s in real trouble and I think it’s bigger than just cost of living,” said Lindsay Owens, executive director of Groundwork Collaborative, a liberal economic advocacy group.Owens noted that Trump has “lost his strength” as voters are increasingly doubtful about Trump’s economic leadership compared to Democrats, adding that the president doesn’t have the time to turn around public perceptions of him as he continues to pursue broad tariffs. New hype about income tax cuts ahead of April There will be new policies rolled out on affordability, a person familiar with the White House thinking said, declining to comment on what those would be. Trump on Thursday indicated there will be more deals coming on drug prices. Two other White House officials said messaging would change but not policy.A big part of the administration’s response on affordability will be educating people ahead of tax season about the role of Trump’s income tax cuts in any refunds they receive in April, the person familiar with planning said. Those cuts were part of the sprawling bill Republicans muscled through Congress in July.This individual stressed that the key challenge is bringing prices down while simultaneously having wages increase, so that people can feel and see any progress.There’s also a bet that the economy will be in a healthier place in six months. With Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s term ending in May, the White House anticipates the start of consistent cuts to the Fed’s benchmark interest rate. They expect inflation rates to cool and declines in the federal budget deficit to boost sentiment in the financial markets.But the U.S. economy seldom cooperates with a president’s intentions, a lesson learned most recently by Trump’s predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, who saw his popularity slump after inflation spiked to a four-decade high in June 2022.The Trump administration maintains it’s simply working through an inflation challenge inherited from Biden, but new economic research indicates Trump has created his own inflation challenge through tariffs.Since April, Harvard University economist Alberto Cavallo and his colleagues, Northwestern University’s Paola Llama and Universidad de San Andres’ Franco Vazquez, have been tracking the impact of the import taxes on consumer prices.In an October paper, the economists found that the inflation rate would have been drastically lower at 2.2%, had it not been for Trump’s tariffs.The administration maintains that tariffs have not contributed to inflation. They plan to make the case that the import taxes are helping the economy and dismiss criticisms of the import taxes as contributing to inflation as Democratic talking points.The fate of Trump’s country-by-country tariffs is currently being decided by the Supreme Court, where justices at a Wednesday hearing seemed dubious over the administration’s claims that tariffs were essentially regulations and could be levied by a president without congressional approval. Trump has maintained at times that foreign countries pay the tariffs and not U.S. citizens, a claim he backed away from slightly Thursday.“They might be paying something,” he said. “But when you take the overall impact, the Americans are gaining tremendously.” Associated Press writers Will Weissert and Michelle L. Price contributed to this report. Josh Boak, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
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