By one measure, workers went on strike more in August than they have for mℱost of the 21st century.

Strikes that either start🌳ed or were ongoing in August halted work for a total of 4.1 million workdays across all the workers involved, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released earlier this month. That was the most since August 2000. The BLS “days of idleness” statistic counts the total days of work stopped by all workers involved in a labor action.

The figure included an ongoing strike by 160,000 Hollywood actors that started in July, but not the United Auto Workers strike launched last week and halted work for a reported 12,700 workers at General Motors (GM), Ford (F), and Stellantis (STLA) plants.

While the individual reason for each strike varies, they’re all occurring as workers wield more leverage in the labor market than they have in recent decades. A 澳洲幸运5官方♏开奖结果体彩网:wave 𝕴of retirements during the pandemic has left the workforce depleted and workers in high demand—and with more power to negotiate with their employers than they had before 2020, even 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:d𒉰espꦦite a recent downtick in job openings. 

“High inflation, a tight labor market, and historically high employee leverage, mostly in blue-collar sectors, have fundamentally changed the labor market in the U.S.,” Anne R. Yuengert, an employment lawyer at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings, wrote in the National Law Review last week. “Labor disruption will continue—impacting employers and consumers in every sector—until the U.S. economy normalizes and the labor market cools, though neither is easy to predict.”

The BLS was tracking nine strikes in August, including seven that hadn't ended by the end of the month:

• 160,000 actors, members of the Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), striking against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the bargaining organization representing the entertainment industry.
• 20,000 hotel workers in Los Angeles and Orange County, members of the UNITE HERE! hospitality workers union. 
• 11,500 Hollywood writers, also striking against the entertainment industry.
• 1,700 nurses at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey, members of the United Steelworkers union. 
• 1,500 teachers at Evergreen Public Schools in Vancouver, Washington State, members of the National Educators Association union. 
• 1,400 workers for Wabtec, members of the United Electrical Workers union, striking at a locomotive manufacturing plant in Erie, Pennsylvania. That strike has since ended.
  

The BLS data doesn’t capture the full extent of striking in the U.S., however, because it only counts strikes of 1,000 workers or more. From after WWII through 1982, the BLS collected data any time more workers went on strike than could be counted on one hand. Reagan-era budget cuts forced the bureau to raise the threshold from six to 1,000.

Labor researchers at Cornell University have taken up gathering small strike data, publishing an unofficial tracker of labor actions which shows there were 254 strikes in 2023 through August, more than 10 times as many as the BLS has recorded over the same period. However, the Cornell data only began in 2021, so it’s impossible to make historical comparisons.

In addition to the big strikes, Cornell’s tracker noted scores of smaller flare-ups, including strikes at multiple individual locations of Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Barnes and Noble, and other retailers.