For students like Levin Lam, Labor Summer is a game-changer.

Testimony by Nari Rhee before the U.S. House HELP Subcommittee highlighting the challenges that most American workers face in the existing retirement system and offering some considerations for integrating lifetime income products into 401(k) plans.

This factsheet describes the characteristics of the private sector security guard workforce in Baltimore, highlighting the need to improve labor conditions in the industry.

Additional details to accompany the new “Know Your Rights” flyer that will be handed out to all California students seeking a work permit.

This blog post examines the extraordinary growth in job-based health care costs, how this impacts California workers, and what the state can do to mitigate the problem. We focus on costs for family coverage, though a similar story could be told about the cost of single coverage.

This paper uses data from January 2022 to determine the earnings of delivery network company drivers in Seattle prior to implementation of the city’s App-Based Worker Minimum Payment Ordinance, and to calculate what their earnings would have been had the policy been in place at that time, finding that earnings would have been below the city’s minimum wage.

Across the country, cities and counties have become laboratories of policy innovation on labor standards. Before 2012, only five localities had minimum wage laws; currently, 65 counties and cities do. To help inform policymakers and other stakeholders, the UC Berkeley Labor Center is maintaining an up-to-date inventory of these laws, with details on wage levels, scheduled increases, and other law details, as well as links to the ordinances.

Our minimum wage and living wage tools and resources includes our Inventory of US City and County Minimum Wage Ordinances and a table of current local minimum wages in California.

In this blog post, we look at veterans’ prominent role in California’s labor unions, using the data and methodology from our recent report, “State of the Unions: California Labor in 2024.”

Our program regularly compiles policy and research updates related to technology and work. See below. New material will be added every few months.

This guide provides an overview of economic and workforce development public funding resources in California. It is designed to support potential applicants in two key areas: identifying relevant funding and integrating “high-road” strategies that prioritize community and worker benefits.

Use the data and resources on this page to learn more about union density in California.

This report is the second in a series of reports looking at wages, living conditions, and economic challenges for workers and their families in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. It finds that while East Bay workers experienced real wage growth during the recovery from the COVID-19 recession, many still lived at or “near” poverty, struggling to make ends meet during the years 2021-2023.

A new UC Berkeley Labor Center report finds that while East Bay workers experienced real wage growth (adjusted for inflation) during the recovery from the COVID-19 recession, many still lived at or “near” poverty, struggling to make ends meet.

A first look at labor’s vision of what the future of AI and digital technologies should look like.

Updated September 2025. An overview of current U.S. public policy that regulates employers’ use of digital workplace technologies.

The report State of the Unions: California Labor in 2024 provides a snapshot of the California labor movement at a time of dramatic political and economic shifts nationwide. Led by researchers at the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) and the UC Berkeley Labor Center, the report analyzes the most recent publicly available data on union density, member demographics, and labor organizing activity in California and the nation.

A report from the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) and the UC Berkeley Labor Center that provides a snapshot of the California labor movement. It analyzes the most recent publicly available data on union density, member demographics, and labor organizing activity in California and the nation, and features case studies highlighting victories for workers in the fast-food, warehousing, and agriculture industries.

This factsheet highlights the characteristics of the private sector security guard workforce in NYC, home to a large part of the nation’s security guard workforce. With its scale and visibility, NYC has the potential to set a national standard for improving labor conditions in the security services industry, which has national revenues of $22.7 billion for unarmed guard services alone. The labor conditions of security guards are also foundational to broader questions of how cities achieve public safety.

It is our assessment that the current proposed regulations do not provide the protections that consumers and workers deserve under the CCPA and that the law itself clearly intended.