The interactive data explorer provides comprehensive data on the state’s low-wage workforce, including demographics, job characteristics, industries, occupations, use of public assistance programs, and geography. It also provides users with graphics, tables, research summaries, interactive visualizations, and downloadable data.
An overview of job quality and equity in existing manufacturing employment in the Bay Area, identifying challenges and strategies for cultivating a high-road manufacturing sector.
Join us for a webinar to discuss the Labor Center’s new report on manufacturing jobs in the Bay Area, Making it in the Bay, and the work of the Bay Area High Road Manufacturing Initiative, which brings together industry, workers, and community partners to advance job quality, equity, and climate action across the region.
This four-day, in-person workshop is offered to lead organizers in labor unions and community-based organizations who want to strengthen their skills in effectively managing their teams to win campaigns. Ofrecemos esta capacitación de 4 dias en persona para organizadores principales en uniones y organizaciones comunitarias quienes quieren fortalecer sus habilidades de dirigir sus equipos para ganar campañas.
This three-session online training teaches Power Analysis, to strengthen participants' understanding of how power is exercised, by who, and to what end—to develop stronger campaigns and organizations.
Quarterly newsletter from the UC Berkeley Labor Center.
The UC Berkeley Labor Center, which has extensively researched this topic, puts the current number of low-wage workers in the state at 5.7 million — nearly 35% of all of California’s workers.
“They’re playing this critical public safety role, but their wages and training have not kept pace with those responsibilities and risks with the job,” said Enrique Lopezlira, a labor economist at Berkeley and an author of the report.
A report from the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, including research from the UC Berkeley Labor Center. This edition of the “State of the Unions” report offers readers insight into how California unions are faring in the face of an unfriendly federal administration, a militarized deportation campaign, and a continuing cost-of-living crisis.
This Roosevelt Institute report identifies 15 policy changes that could put the US on a trajectory to a high-road, resilient clean energy economy. These include specific incentives, regulations, technical assistance, clarifying existing statutes, and improving coordination both within and beyond government. Underpinning all is attention to building the high-road advantage the US will need to succeed, and supporting broad distribution of the gains it delivers.
Social Security isn’t just a “safety net” for the elderly; it is California’s economic bedrock. In 2024, the program injected almost $138 billion into our state—more than the gross domestic product of California’s computer and electronics manufacturing sector, and more than double the economic output of the motion picture and television industry and agriculture.
SSRC’s Just Tech program. What does it mean to have a “human-in-the-loop”? Including examples from the 2026 legislative session, in this piece published by SSRC’s Just Tech Platform, senior researcher Mishal Khan dives into the many different HITL provisions being proposed in legislatures across the country today, highlighting their impacts on workers.
Researchers Annette Bernhardt and Lisa Kresge wrote in the report that ADS technology, which commonly employs AI, can be used in workplaces to give workers directions about their job tasks, predict workers’ future behavior and rank workers.
Should Becerra cruise to victory in November, as polling suggests, he will face what may be the steepest decline in health insurance coverage in a generation, one that will land especially hard in his home state.
Updated August 17, 2026 with new Medi-Cal and Covered California enrollment maps by district and county. Labor Center researchers have analyzed the potential impacts of Medicaid cuts on California and the importance of the Medi-Cal program to our state.
Join the UC Berkeley Labor Center this Fall! Find out more about the labor movement and social justice work by attending our panel discussions, free film screenings, partner event talks, and more.
