April 5, 2010 1:59PM # Unions and Government Debt By [Chris Edwards](https://www.cato.org/people/chris-edwards) --- SHARE [In a recent bulletin](https://www.cato.org/pubs/tbb/tbb_61.pdf), I argued that public-sector unions impose various costs and burdens on state and local governments. Here is some more evidence. The chart below shows a scatter plot of the union shares in state/​local government workforces and state/​local government debt levels as a share of state gross domestic product. Each blue dot is a U.S. state. The variables are correlated — as the union share increases, a state tends to have a higher government debt load. The chart shows the fitted regression line in pink dots (R‑square=0.27; F‑stat=18; t‑stat on the union share variable=4.2). The correlation is likely caused by the fact that unionized government workers are powerful lobby groups that push for higher government-worker compensation and higher government spending in general. (Thanks to Amy Mandler for data help and Andrew Biggs for suggestions. Andrew’s work on state debt is [here](http://www.aei.org/scholar/135)). ![Media Name: 201004_blog_edwards51.jpg](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs_2x/public/wp-content/uploads/201004_blog_edwards51.jpg?itok=EGgCkZkf) ##### Related Tags [Tax and Budget Policy](https://www.cato.org/tax-budget-policy) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).