Category: The Rise of Populism

Overview

Across Europe, populist parties—once relegated to the political fringe—are now mainstays of national politics. Some are even winning power in the Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, Austria, and beyond. Whether left-wing or right-wing, populists share a message that resonates widely: The system has failed you, but we can take you back to something better.

What is it about this nostalgic promise that proves so powerful? In my recent research with Tyler Reny of Claremont Graduate University and Jeremy Ferwerda of Dartmouth College,¹ we seek answers to exactly that question, surveying nearly 20,000 people across 19 European countries.² We find that many of these voters support populist parties not just because of economic anxiety or ideological conviction, but also because they believe that people like them had it better in the past. This phenomenon—what we call nostalgic deprivation—captures a potent psychological undercurrent shaping European politics today.

This sentiment is not simply personal nostalgia for a golden youth. It also is the belief that one’s broader social group—defined by class, culture, geography, or political identity—has declined in wealth, respect, or influence over the past generation.³ In Hungary, Italy, Slovenia, and even parts of Western Europe, large portions of the public feel not only left behind but left out as well.

Consider the case of France, where Marine Le Pen’s right-wing populist party, National Rally, steadily increased its vote share over the past decade. Her messaging emphasized a return to traditional French values, national sovereignty, and protection from globalization. This appeal resonates strongly with voters in deindustrialized regions who feel abandoned by Paris-based elites. Similarly, in Germany, the Alternative for Germany, or AfD populist party has capitalized on eastern Germans’ sense of marginalization in the post-reunification era, painting a picture of cultural erosion and political neglect.

It is striking that this sense of loss doesn’t always align with objective reality. Certainly, many fringe party supporters experience measurable economic disadvantages.⁴ Yet social scientists have shown that voters’ subjective attitudes similarly predict their political preferences.⁵

In my own aforementioned research, we find that many people who report feeling worse-off politically or socially today are not necessarily facing personal hardship. And in countries where living standards have improved dramatically since the fall of communism, such as Poland or Slovakia, we find that nostalgic deprivation remains common. The perception—not necessarily the data or reality—is what drives political behavior.⁶

This helps explain the cross-cutting appeal of populism in Europe, but also in the United States under President Donald Trump. Left-wing populist parties emphasize economic injustice, while right-wing populists focus on cultural and national identity. But both speak to voters who feel that “people like me” were once more central to society—and are now dismissed by political elites.

This essay first delves into our research on nostalgic deprivation and its root causes before projecting future trends in populist support at the national level. We then turn to the implications of this political and psychological dynamic on the prospects for mainstream parties going forward.

Strong feelings of status loss drive populism’s rise

In our research, my co-authors and I find that these emotions of being left behind or worse off than they used to be are not just common, but politically potent, too. Across countries in Europe, those who feel deprived compared to the past—economically, socially, or politically—are significantly more likely to support populist parties.

We measure this sentiment by inquiring about respondents’ scaled sense of financial well-being, political power, and social status today and 25 years ago. This allows us to more precisely observe feelings of loss without querying people about it directly. Importantly, we find that these feelings vary by ideological camp: Voters on the right are more likely to feel politically deprived, believing that their group has lost voice or representation, while those on the left expressed more social deprivation—feeling less respected or valued in society.

In short, populist energy is not fueled by a single grievance. Rather, it is a shared feeling of collective decline, refracted through different lenses.

Take Spain’s left-wing populist Podemos party, which rose in prominence in response to the 2008 global financial crisis. Its leaders channeled the anger of a generation, those who felt not just economically stunted but also ignored in the corridors of power. These voters demanded redistribution of resources and restoration of dignity. At the same time, Spain’s far-right party, Vox, appealed to a very different kind of nostalgia—for a unified, Catholic Spain that many feel is disappearing amid secularization, regional devolution, and immigration. These diametrically opposed visions share a common root: a perceived loss of standing among certain voters.

Somewhat paradoxically, our research also reveals that nostalgic deprivation is most impactful where populist parties are not in power. In these countries, populists can make sweeping promises to restore what was lost. But once they hold office, their ability to fulfill these promises is constrained. Subsequently, their supporters, faced with present-day responsibilities rather than a symbolic mission of revival, tend to report less deprivation—and, sometimes, less enthusiasm.

Hungary offers a partial exception. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has managed to retain a populist appeal despite being in power for more than a decade. He does this by continuously identifying new external enemies—EU bureaucrats in Brussels, George Soros, immigrants—and presenting himself as a defender of Hungary’s authentic identity. Yet even in Hungary, some signs suggest that the emotional force of nostalgic deprivation is gradually waning, as allegations of corruption accumulate and the image of Prime Minister Orbán transitions from insurgent to establishment.

This, however, does not mean populist movements will fade once in office. If anything, it shows how resilient and adaptable they are. As long as voters continue to feel overlooked or disrespected, there will be a market for political actors who promise recognition.

Nostalgic deprivation is widespread across European nations

Our research finds that a sense of lost wealth or economic stability is most prominent in EU countries with the highest overall reported levels of nostalgic deprivation. By contrast, among those countries with lower overall reported deprivation, we find that perceived loss of social status is more conspicuous. The sense of lost political power is, on average, the least common form of deprivation expressed.

Figure 1 below shows that a sense of nostalgic deprivation—be it economic, political, or social—is widespread among European citizens. Panel A plots the proportion of respondents expressing economic, political power, and social deprivation in each country studied, with each dimension of deprivation rescaled between 0 and 1. Panel B examines the demographic characteristics of those respondents reporting the highest levels of each type of deprivation (75th percentile or higher within each country). Each point in Panel B indicates how the demographic characteristics of economically, politically, or socially deprived individuals, respectively, deviate from the full sample of respondents. Values to the right of the red line indicate cases where a group experienced more deprivation than all survey respondents as a whole within countries, while values to the left of the red line indicate cases where a group experienced less deprivation. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1

As Panel A shows, the lowest rates of nostalgic deprivation are found in Denmark, where approximately a quarter of respondents indicated of deprivation to some extent, while the highest is in Slovenia, where roughly half of respondents do. Notably, the countries exhibiting the highest overall levels of deprivation—Slovenia, Italy, Hungary, and Bulgaria—were governed by populists during the survey fielding period. A clear exception to this pattern is Poland, which was governed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party at the time of fielding our survey but displayed deprivation scores more consistent with its Baltic neighbors not governed by populist parties.

Still, when we aggregate the measure of deprivation, we find that respondents moving from the minimum to the maximum level of nostalgic deprivation would be 55 percentage points more likely to express populist attitudes in Western Europe and 29 percentage points more likely to do so in Eastern Europe. With respect to voting, the difference between locations is even sharper: We estimate that those citizens moving from the minimum to the maximum on the deprivation score would be 57 percentage points more likely to vote for a populist party in Western Europe and 17 percentage points more likely to support a populist party in Eastern Europe. The weaker results in Eastern Europe for this measure likely reflect that many populist parties in this region were incumbents at the time the survey was fielded.

Demographically, we find that those perceiving lost political clout are more likely to be men, while those perceiving lost economic stability are more likely to be women. We also see that socioeconomic indicators, such as people’s jobs, homeownership rates, education levels, and incomes are strongly correlated with economic deprivation and, to a lesser extent, with social deprivation. Perceived lost social status is notably correlated with age, with older respondents indicating elevated rates, and negatively correlated with living in a rural environment.

Despite these findings, however, the broader correlation between nostalgic deprivation and demographic characteristics remains relatively weak. In other words, on average, citizens who express high levels of deprivation are demographically similar to citizens who do not view their situation as pessimistically. High levels of nostalgic deprivation are evident in Western Europe, but also in Eastern Europe, where living conditions have improved more substantially over the past 25 years.

Potential for future support for populist parties

Which countries are most susceptible to far-right appeals in the future? Table 1 below lays out each country’s average score on the three separate attitudinal predispositions that, according to my research, are correlated to nostalgic deprivation and best predict far-right support: illiberal attitudes, or opposition to democratic principles; ethnocentrism, or the tendency to view one’s own culture as superior to others; and perceptions of demographic change, such as that caused by immigration.⁷ I add these scores together into a scale of far-right “vulnerability” (rescaled so that the highest vulnerability score is 1.00) to estimate how fertile each country’s public attitudes are toward far-right rhetoric and ideas.⁸

As Table 1 shows, we find much higher vulnerability to the far-right in Eastern Europe and much less in Western Europe, with the notable exceptions of Austria and France. (See Table 1.)

Table 1

To identify the unrealized potential of far-right and far-left parties in different EU countries, my colleagues and I created a model that uses demographic and attitudinal data to predict which current mainstream center-left and center-right party supporters would be most likely to defect to the fringe in the future. We examine the average demographic and attitudinal characteristics of far-left and far-right supporters, as well as those of current center-left and center-right supporters who our model predicts would support the far-left or far-right down the road.

Looking at the far-right, there remains a substantial share of the population—about 4 percent of our sample—who do not currently support the far-right but are more ethnocentric, ideologically conservative, authoritarian, and illiberal than current far-right supporters. With the far-left, we also find that there is a substantial share of people—about 10 percent of our sample—who are young, single, low-income, and are relatively illiberal, and who could be persuaded to back the far-left in the future.

As such, there is modest potential for growth in support for the far-right, and potentially even more growth for the far left, across most of Europe. These findings suggest that Europe’s fringe parties have not yet peaked and still have room to grow. (See Table 2.)

Table 2

A dilemma for mainstream political parties

For mainstream political parties, the power of subjective feelings associated with fear, loss, and exclusion—feelings that are often separate from the empirical realities of the voters who express these emotions—creates a dilemma. Technocratic solutions, policy proposals, and Gross Domestic Product growth alone will not restore trust among these voters for the “establishment.”

Instead, what is needed is a reengagement with the emotional fabric of democratic life—an understanding that people vote not just with their wallets or ideologies, but also with their sense of belonging. That task is harder than it sounds.

But even though recognition cannot be legislated, it can be modeled through inclusive rhetoric, genuine consultation, and policies that reflect more than just economic efficiency. Political elites must find ways to speak to the diverse sources of dignity and identity that citizens hold dear to reassure these voters about their place in an uncertain future. This means attending not just to material needs but also to symbolic ones: the desire to be seen, heard, and respected.

Center-right and center-left governments would do well to design and effectively communicate policies that seek to rein in globalization’s excesses without diminishing the benefits of connected open markets. They should manage the flows of migration with selective, strategic admissions systems that identify newcomers best positioned to contribute to national goals.

Ultimately, though, these policies must also be laden with meaning. They must recognize that identity, history, and belonging are not just cultural touchstones—they are political forces as well. A politics of recognition does not mean pandering to prejudice. It means acknowledging the ways that people define themselves and making sure that diverse identities can find affirmation within a shared democratic project and shared national goals.

In this sense, nostalgic deprivation is not just a warning sign. It also is an opportunity to reflect on how democratic systems can better include those who feel excluded so as to create a future that people feel is truly theirs—rather than something they simply endure.

Conclusion

Europe’s experience with populism holds lessons for the United States, where similar trends are evident. Nostalgic slogans, polarized media, and a growing divide between urban and rural identities all contribute to a familiar feeling: the sense that “my” group once mattered more and now matters less.

In the United States, President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement explicitly invoked this narrative.⁹ Because the MAGA movement needed to navigate the U.S. two-party system, its populism is awkwardly married with the Republican Party’s religious conservativism and aversion to taxing wealth. But ultimately, Trumpism is essentially about restoring lost political, economic, and cultural status¹⁰—even though, as in Europe, the appeal of this message does not always correlate with objective deprivation.

Populist voting is ultimately a reflexive response to rapid societal change. And both in the United States and in Europe, the past two generations have experienced rapidly increasing ethnic and religious diversity,¹¹ which has eroded the position of formerly dominant demographic groups, leading to fears of reduced social status—or, at the extreme, “replacement” by immigrant populations. Concurrently, the consolidation of corporate power and deunionization in Europe and the United States has produced widening economic inequality, greater economic insecurity, and diminished prospects for socioeconomic mobility.¹²

Grievances associated with these cultural and economic transformations are commonly connected to growing support for far-right and far-left political movements, respectively. Yet both sets of grievances are linked to globalization—the expansion and intensifying interconnectedness of human migration and markets. The research my co-authors and I have done shows that while right- and left-wing populist platforms may ultimately reach different targets and point to different scapegoats, they appeal to voters with similar feelings about their own place in society and the economy.

Understanding these emotions isn’t an endorsement of its political outcomes. But ignoring them is perilous. Democracies depend not only on participation, but also on a shared belief in a system that sees and values everyone. When that belief erodes, the ground becomes fertile for those who claim they can restore what was lost—even if they cannot.

About the authors

Justin Gest is a professor of policy and government at George Mason University. He previously was a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer in Harvard University’s Departments of Government and Sociology. Gest earned his bachelor’s degree in government at Harvard University and his Ph.D. in government from the London School of Economics.

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Overview

Once on the political fringes, far-right parties have become established actors in many democracies. The European Parliament election in 2024, for example, resulted in far-right parties receiving more than 20 percent of the vote, and far-right parties are now represented in nearly all national parliaments in Europe. Outside of Europe, the far right has been in government in countries such as India, Israel, and Brazil. The current Trump administration in the United States also is dominated by far-right actors.

For a long time, one main research question on the political success of far-right parties was why is the far right successful in some countries but not in others? Some countries, such as Germany, were even considered immune to the contemporary far-right threat due to their particular national history.

It has now become clear that no country should be considered immune to the appeal of the far right. A mix of factors that is common to all post-industrial democracies has created a fertile ground for their political successes. Cases such as in Germany or Portugal show how quickly far-right parties can become established actors in national politics and receive a significant share of the vote.

It is thus not surprising that the rise of the far right has sparked considerable interest among researchers, commentators, and the broader public. Explanations for its success have often either focused on economic or cultural explanations. These explanations were often pitted against each other. But it is becoming increasingly clear that economic and cultural concerns are deeply intertwined among the supporters of far-right parties and across the broader electorate.

People do not necessarily separate these issues in their everyday lives—they see them as part of the same story about what is happening in the world around them. Rural resentment against urban elites has underpinnings of economic inequalities but, at the same time, is fueled by racial stereotypes and White identity politics.¹³ Competition in housing markets or underfunded schools can be regarded as the result of neoliberal economic policies, but they can be rhetorically connected to immigration, too.

A core idea for understanding how economic and cultural concerns are intertwined is as threats to social status.¹⁴ Social status as a concept dates back to the classic work of the early 20th century German sociologist Max Weber. It can be understood as peoples’ sense of value based on their position in society. While concepts such as class and socioeconomic status often refer to “objective” material values, such as levels of income and wealth, social status goes beyond material concerns and is based on a shared form of recognition across a society.¹⁵

Importantly, social status is not something that just exists in peoples’ heads: People experience tangible benefits or harms based on their social status. Social status determines how you are treated by others, how you can perform in certain contexts, and your access to different networks and social circles. 

Typical sources of social status include education and occupation.¹⁶ Education and occupation do not only matter because they generate more or less income. They also come with different levels of prestige and power in society. Gender, race, and sexual identity similarly come with different levels of social status in society.

A growing body of research now suggests that when people see their social status threatened, they become more likely to support the far right. Importantly, the core group of supporters for the far right are not necessarily those who see themselves at the bottom of social hierarchies already but are those that perceive that they have something to lose.

Threats to social status can be both economic and cultural. They include developments that challenge a position in society that people value. These can be material economic risks that make it more likely that one’s standard of living will become significantly worse.¹⁷ But they also include transformations of roles in society.

Gender (being a man) and race (being White) were historically important sources of status in society. These roles as a source of status have been challenged in recent decades, and White men see their social status as threatened. Research by Princeton University’s Noam Gidron and Peter Hall at Harvard University, for example, demonstrates that compared to the early 1990s, the subjective social-status perceptions of men without a college degree have strongly declined in many countries in Europe and in the United States.¹⁸

In this essay, my focus is on economic sources of threats to status, focusing not on the effects of material hardships leading to more support for the far right, but rather on how economic changes and risks can contribute to a sense of potential loss of roles and routines that provide people with value, meaning, and identity. I focus on two economic threats to status: unemployment risk and rental market risks. Both a higher risk of unemployment and rising local rents contain a threat to (disposable) income and wealth. But these threats go beyond that, because people potentially will have to give up things that create a sense of value in their lives: their job, the areas in which they live, and the social circles in which they interact.

This essay summarizes my research on how economic threats to social status in the form of unemployment risk and rental market risk affects support for the far right in Europe.¹⁹ My work with collaborators shows that when people face a higher risk of unemployment, they become more likely to support far-right political parties. Within a household, one member at a high risk of unemployment is enough to increase support for the far right among both members of the household. Similarly, when people face increasing local rent prices—independent of the rent that they actually pay—they also become more likely to support the far right.

A focus on threats to social status helps answer one central question in the current ascent of the far right: Why do people who face adverse economic conditions vote for a party of the far right instead of a party of the left? Put differently: Why do people in these circumstances not support parties that would arguably provide better policy solutions for them? Why do they not support parties that promise labor market and rental market protections, better unemployment benefits, and rental controls?

There are many answers to these questions, and some are certainly related to social democratic and other center-left parties losing credibility on actually providing solutions to these issues.²⁰ But beyond this, social status as a concept allows us to understand why far-right appeals resonate so well with people facing economic risks.

How threats to social status in labor markets affect support for the far right

A major source of threats to economic status is the risk of unemployment. Crucially, the focus here is on risk. In my research, I find that it is not economic hardship but the latent threat to livelihoods that matter for far-right support. My co-authors and I argue that when people are afraid of losing their jobs, their social status is threatened, and they become more likely to support the far right.

But we do not regard unemployment risk as a factor that only affects individuals. We also take into consideration that households are crucial sites for the formation of political preferences. When someone has a partner at a higher risk of unemployment, this affects their perceptions of threats to their social status—even if they themselves are relatively well-protected against unemployment.

We combine two data sources to test how unemployment risk affects support for the far right. We follow a common research approach, measuring unemployment risk as the share of people in an occupation (of the same age group and gender) who are unemployed. We can estimate this share based on a large-scale labor market survey, the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions, or EU SILC.²¹ Research indeed shows that there is a link between this objective measure of unemployment risk and subjective perceptions of risk.

Based on a standard categorization of occupational groups, the International Labour Organization’s International Standard Classification of Occupations, we can combine the data on unemployment risk with survey data from the European Social Survey.²² These survey data include information on voting behavior, as well as on household composition and partner’s occupation. We analyze data for 11 European countries from 2002 until 2018,²³ limiting our analysis to the working-age population between the ages of 18 and 65. We find that with increasing unemployment risk, people become significantly more likely to support a far-right party. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1

Holding a number of factors constant, when a person is at a higher risk of being unemployed, they show a higher propensity to vote for the radical right. Figure 1 shows that the predicted probability to vote for a radical right party increases from 0.06 to 0.15 with unemployment risk moving from low to high. Considering that the baseline probability to vote for the radical right is low in our sample—there are many countries that, before the 2010s, only saw very marginal radical right support—this is a substantive increase.

In our research, we are not only interested in how an individual’s unemployment risk affects their propensity to support the radical right but also how it interacts with a partner’s unemployment risk. We find that a partner’s risk also significantly affects someone’s likelihood to support the radical right. This is true for men and women. With the increasing risk of a partner being unemployed, people become more likely to support the far right. Even for people with relatively low unemployment risk themselves, if their partner has a high risk of unemployment, then they are more likely to support the far right.

In other words, one person at high unemployment risk in a household creates two radical-right voters.

How threats to social status in rental markets affect support for the far right

As a second threat to social status, we have investigated what we label rental market risk to social status linked to developments in local rental prices. Local rent increases constitute a significant risk to the economic and social foundations of people’s lives. When people see rents in their neighborhoods rising, they know that they potentially might not be able to continue to afford to live there in the future. This constitutes a threat to many aspects of a person’s life. Having to move can mean longer commutes to work, switching kids’ daycare or school, or being farther away from friends and family.

Consequently, local rent increases constitute a status threat independent of actual rent levels. Some rental markets, such as those in Germany, provide quite high protections for renters. Fixed-term contracts are rare, rent increases are regulated, and only under special circumstances (such as moving into a place themselves) can landlords terminate leases.

But even in these relatively protected circumstances, people are aware that changing life events (such as having kids) or landlord decisions to renovate a place or to move in themselves can quickly expose them to the new realities of a rental market. We thus expect rental market risk to increase support for the far right.

In our empirical analysis, we combine fine-grained data on rental price developments at the lowest ZIP code level with a long-running German household panel survey.²⁴ If we just compare areas cross-sectionally, we find the patterns that we would expect. In high-rent inner-city areas, people are more likely to support left-progressive parties. This can largely be explained by highly educated professionals (a core electoral group of the progressive left) being more likely to move to areas with high rents. By contrast, far-right parties are strong in more rural areas and in eastern Germany, where rents are lower on average.

Our data, however, allow us to go beyond such comparisons. We can investigate how changing local rents affect people who already live in a neighborhood. We study people who have lived in the same neighborhood for at least 5 years and can thus analyze how changing local rents affect their party preferences. We focus on what researchers define as within-individual variation over time: We look at how the political preferences of the same person change when they are exposed to changing rent prices in their neighborhood.

We find that where local rents increase more, people with lower levels of income become significantly more likely to support the far-right Alternative für Deutschland. This is particularly pronounced in urban areas, where these changes can happen more rapidly and are easily observable through changing neighborhood compositions.

Importantly, we do not find that actual rent levels affect support for the AfD. Rather, it is rental market risk in the form of changes in local rent prices that matters for support of the far right.

Why these finding about the far right and social status matter

Our research shows that threats to social status in the form of unemployment risk and rental market risk significantly increase people’s propensity to support the far right. Crucially, we do not find actual economic hardship—unemployment status and rent levels—to matter in these contexts, but rather the latent risk of losing social status. This is in line with other work on the risk of losing jobs to automation.²⁵ People become more likely to support the far right when they see their living conditions threatened, not necessarily when they have already experienced loss and hardship.

This means that the common narrative of populist far-right supporters as the “left behind” might create a wrong image of who these voters are. Far-right supporters are better understood as the people in the lower middle classes and the so-called petite bourgeoisie—the owners or managers of small businesses who are not struggling to provide the bare minimum for themselves but rather have accumulated material and cultural sources of status that they now see threatened.

Importantly, these people do not support the far right because of the its policy proposals. People who are at higher risk of unemployment do not support the far right because they think that the far right has the best labor market policies, nor do people facing increasing local rents embrace the far right for their housing policies. Far-right support in response to threats to the current social status of people should thus not be understood as an instrumental wish for better policies provided by these actors.

Instead, people seek out the far right to reinstate a social order that guarantees their privileged place in it. It constitutes a nostalgia for a time that maybe never existed. Far-right parties receive support among these voters not for their promises to change policy but for their promises to change politics and polity.

Left-wing and progressive parties do not currently provide any such appeals at scale. They have become parties of policy.²⁶ They see and portray themselves as solving problems and providing incremental changes to small-scale questions. They value pragmatism over ideology. The answer to the question of why economic risk does not translate into support for the left lies—at least partially—in this discrepancy between demand and supply.

Conclusion

What can we learn from the relationship between threats to social status and far-right support for current developments in European and U.S. politics? In particular, what are the lessons for those who are interested in crafting economically and socially progressive policy agendas and who want to defend liberal democracy against the threat from the far right?

First, our findings show that the economy certainly matters for understanding support for the far right. But those findings also should caution against a reductionist and materialist understanding of far-right support. Economic hardship is not a necessary condition for someone to support the far right: Far-right support does not disappear in economically good times.

Indeed, racism, sexism, antisemitism, and anti-LGBTQ+ attitudes remain at the core of far-right support.²⁷ We can find these sentiments across all class groups and across all levels of education. The far right as a political, cultural, and social project has successfully linked perceptions of threats to economic well-being with hostility toward minority groups. But this does not mean that if progressive policymakers reduce economic uncertainty, people will necessarily reduce their hostility toward these groups. Racism, sexism, and transphobia have become essential building blocks of some voters’ political identities and have become normalized as elements of political discourse.

Economic and social policies will not be enough to reverse these dynamics. Yet economic policies do matter. The erosion of a social safety net, the decline in public services, and the deterioration of government-provided health care that have resulted from austerity policies have significantly contributed to creating grievances that the far right can exploit.²⁸ Continuing these policies means creating a steady or growing reservoir of far-right voters. Shifting away from these policies is a necessary part of a strategy to reduce far-right support.

At the same time, it should be clear that this is a long-term, not a short-term, strategy and that it is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to contain the far right. As Columbia University’s Alexander Hertel-Fernandez and Shayna Strom, the president and CEO of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, have argued in this series, “thin deliverism” will not work.²⁹ The sources of far-right support are too structural. Too many politicians still believe that solving problems will immediately reduce the appeal of the far right. This won’t happen.

The far right is here to stay for the foreseeable future. Politicians and activists need to embrace the long-term challenge. In the short term, questions of politics and polity will be more important to protect liberal democracy from the far right. But economic and social policies will play an important role in shaping the conditions for far-right party support in the long run.

About the author

Tarik Abou-Chadi is a professor in European Union and comparative European politics at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford’s Nuffield College.

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Overview

Far-right and right-wing populist political parties differ in many respects, but nearly all share one common thread: strong opposition to immigration. These parties often push for stricter border controls and, in some cases, advocate for repatriating immigrant communities already in the country.

Research also shows that immigration consistently ranks among the top concerns for the voters and supporters of far-right parties.²⁴² Yet studies examining the relationship between immigration levels and support for right-wing populist parties remain inconclusive. Some find that immigration fuels support for these parties, while others suggest no effect—or even the opposite.

This essay offers a new way to understand how concerns about immigration translate into political behavior. Below, I distinguish between two core concepts: triggers and channels. Triggers refer to changes or shocks to voters’ circumstances—such as the rising presence of immigrants or the increased risk of unemployment—while channels describe the mechanisms through which these shocks lead to greater support for right-wing populist parties.

This framework helps clarify how both cultural and economic factors can interact to generate increased support for right-wing populist parties. I also explore how a different kind of demographic shift—emigration, or the movement of people out of an area—can influence voter behavior in similar ways. Finally, I discuss how increased exposure to immigrants can, somewhat counterintuitively, lead to reduced opposition to immigration, particularly when contact is meaningful and cooperative.

Explaining increased support for anti-immigration parties

The rise of far-right and right-wing populist parties marks one of the most significant political developments across advanced democracies in recent decades. These parties have gained ground in national legislatures around the world, and in several countries, such as Italy and Sweden, they have entered governing coalitions.²⁴³ As a result, their influence on policy—especially immigration policy—has grown substantially.

Despite their differences, nearly all right-wing populist parties share a defining trait: firm resistance to immigration. Throughout this essay, I refer to them as anti-immigration parties, reflecting both their platforms and their rhetoric. These parties typically advocate for policies that restrict immigration, including hard limits on annual inflows and, in more extreme cases, calls for repatriation or denaturalization of foreign-born residents.

Research shows that the leaders of these parties overwhelmingly support such views.²⁴⁴ The same applies to their voters.²⁴⁵ Supporters of anti-immigration parties tend to rank immigration among their top political concerns and consistently favor tougher policies toward immigration. As a result, immigration is a unifying issue for both the leadership and the base of these parties.

Much of the academic and political debate around the rise of these far-right parties has focused on immigration as the key driver. The common assumption is that an increase in local immigrant populations directly fuels support for these parties, primarily through cultural concerns among the native-born population about perceived loss of status or identity as a result of increased diversity. Some research backs this up.²⁴⁶ But other studies complicate the picture, suggesting that economic insecurity—rising unemployment or growing inequality, for example—plays a more central role than immigration.²⁴⁷

This debate often pits cultural explanations of populism’s growing support against economic ones. But are these really opposing forces, or do they interact in more complex ways? Rather than viewing cultural and economic explanations as mutually exclusive, some scholars have suggested that these factors often operate in tandem.

One way to understand this interaction is by distinguishing between triggers—the immediate events or conditions that prompt political reactions—and channels—the interpretive or mediating frameworks through which these reactions are shaped. Both triggers and channels can reflect cultural or economic concerns, particularly when it comes to immigration.

How triggers and channels shape political behavior

Much of the existing research on support for anti-immigration parties focuses on identifying the conditions that drive changes in voting behavior. In many cases, these studies isolate specific shifts in local or national contexts that correlate with rising support for anti-immigration parties.

Political scientist Dominik Hangartner at ETH Zurich and co-authors, for example, examine the impact of refugee arrivals during the so-called European refugee crisis of 2015-2016.²⁴⁸ The study compares Greek islands that received refugees to those that did not, arguing that the only meaningful difference between the two was the presence of refugees. Since other economic and social conditions were largely similar, the presence—and particularly the visibility—of immigrants served as a clear triggerfor changes in political behaviors. In this case, immigration itself acts as the stimulus that pushes voters toward anti-immigration parties.

By contrast, economic triggers are at the heart of other explanations for populism’s rise. For instance, University of Bocconi scholars Italo Colantone and Piero Stanig link job losses from rising import competition in the United Kingdom with support for the 2016 Brexit referendum.²⁴⁹ Here, exposure to worsening economic conditions—rather than immigration itself—is believed to have shifted political preferences toward populist ideas.

These two examples are often used to illustrate a broader divide in the research. The first case highlights a cultural trigger, while the second focuses on an economic one. But to fully understand how these triggers lead to political change, we must also consider the channels through which they operate.

There are two main channels: an economic channel and a cultural or immigration-related channel. Both types of triggers—those related to immigration and those related to economic conditions—can influence voting behavior through either channel. Increased immigration, for example, might lead native-born voters to feel that their cultural identity is under threat, or it might raise concerns about labor market competition and the allocation of public resources. In both scenarios, the trigger—increased immigration—is the same, but the channel—threat to cultural identity or to economic security—differs.

The interaction can also work in reverse. Economic hardship can heighten awareness of immigration policies, leading voters to blame immigrants for declining services or limited job opportunities. Here, the economic trigger operates through a cultural channel, as economic stress is interpreted through the lens of increased immigration.

These interactions complicate the simple dichotomy between cultural and economic explanations. Rather than viewing them as competing theories, this framework helps us understand how they often work together through different channels to shape political behavior.

Immigration as a trigger shaping political behavior

Because immigration is a central policy concern for anti-immigration parties, it is no surprise that many demand-side explanations in the research focus on it. Numerous studies have shown that immigration consistently ranks among the most salient political issues for both voters and representatives of these parties.²⁵⁰

In most analyses, immigration is operationalized as either the level or the change in the share of foreign-born individuals within native-born populations’ local areas. These aggregate-level indicators are then linked to either individual-level survey data or election outcomes at the aggregate level.

Scholars generally identify two main reasons why increased immigration in a neighborhood might influence native-born voters’ propensity to support anti-immigration parties. The first is cultural: Immigrants—particularly those perceived as coming from “culturally distant” regions—are often viewed as a threat to the cultural and social status of native-born residents. As the presence of immigrants becomes more visible, some voters fear that their traditions, identity, and social position are at risk.²⁵¹

The second is economic, with two separate but related mechanisms. First, there is concern over labor market competition. Native-born workers may fear that immigrants, especially from low-income countries, will accept lower wages or take jobs that would otherwise go to them.²⁵²  Second, there is concern over access to welfare services. Economically vulnerable voters might worry that increased immigration will lead to greater competition for unemployment benefits, public housing, or other forms of public assistance.²⁵³ The visibility of immigrants in these neighborhoods makes such concerns more immediate and politically salient.

Notably, these economic fears are expected to have the greatest impact on voters who are themselves economically insecure.²⁵⁴ Yet there is a related economic channel that can affect voters beyond those facing direct economic vulnerability: Increases in local immigrant populations may signal to native-born residents that the government will need to redirect public funds—for education, health care, or transportation—toward accommodating new arrivals.

Some voters might also worry that taxes will be raised to meet these demands. These concerns are not limited to lower-income groups. Indeed, even higher-income voters may perceive immigrants as a net burden on public finances, resulting in increased demand for restrictive immigration policies.²⁵⁵

While immigration serves as the trigger across these examples, the channel through which it affects political preferences varies—cultural for some, economic for others. These competing interpretations often lead to different conclusions about what drives support for anti-immigration parties: either immigration itself or the underlying economic conditions that shape how immigration is perceived.

Economic conditions as triggers shaping political behavior

An alternative category of triggers relates to economic factors. These can be broadly divided into two subtypes. The first concerns changes to voters’ personal economic circumstances, and particularly their labor market status, such as wage reductions, job losses, or heightened unemployment risks. The second involves shifts in broader neighborhood or regional economic conditions, such as long-term industrial decline or the erosion of both private and public goods and services, often as a consequence of austerity policies.²⁵⁶

These economic shocks can feed into anti-immigration sentiment through several channels. One common pathway connects economic hardship to immigration-related fears. For instance, a laid-off worker might attribute their displacement to labor market competition from immigrants.²⁵⁷ Others might worry that, in the wake of personal economic decline, they now face greater competition from immigrants over access to welfare services, such as unemployment benefits or social assistance. In these cases, economic hardship acts as the trigger, while immigration becomes the perceived threat—making anti-immigration policy more salient.²⁵⁸

Voters also can perceive declining neighborhood conditions as stemming from immigration. Government resources directed toward immigrant populations may be seen as coming at the expense of investment in struggling local economies. In this view, the state is seen as prioritizing immigrants over native-born citizens, reinforcing perceptions of neglect among these groups.²⁵⁹

Importantly, economic triggers can also operate through direct, nonimmigration channels. Although anti-immigration parties are primarily known for their positions on immigration, many also advocate for protectionist trade policies. They frequently oppose free trade and international agreements, arguing that these policies harm domestic industries.

In this context, economic distress—especially that caused by import competition—can drive voters toward anti-immigration parties not because of immigration, but due to dissatisfaction with global trade. Workers laid off due to competition from low-wage countries, for example, might demand more protectionist policies at home and find their views reflected in these parties’ platforms.²⁶⁰

Finally, most anti-immigration parties also adopt populist narratives that blame mainstream political elites for economic decline. These parties portray themselves as champions of “the people” in opposition to the interests of a distant political class, which is often aligned with economic, media, and cultural elites.²⁶¹ Within this framework, established parties are blamed for rising inequality and regional economic stagnation.

Voters in these economically depressed areas may feel “left behind” as wealth and opportunity become concentrated in urban centers. While immigration can still factor into this narrative, the core grievance may focus more broadly on elite neglect, austerity, or perceived urban bias in public investment.²⁶²

Beyond immigration: Emigration and the effects of intergroup contact

So far, this essay has focused on how immigration is expected to increase support for anti-immigration parties. Yet two additional demographic dynamics merit attention: emigration from depopulating areas and the role of intergroup contact in shaping attitudes toward immigration.

First, let’s consider emigration as a trigger. When working-age residents leave depopulating areas in search of jobs or education, this lowers the local tax base and reduces demand for both public and private goods and services. When a former mill town loses its main employer, for example, its young residents might move away in search of opportunities elsewhere, leading to cuts in services, such as health care, education, and transportation. As demand shrinks and revenue declines, public infrastructure deteriorates. The remaining population faces reduced access to essential services and amenities.²⁶³

Beyond material consequences, emigration can also foster a psychological sense of abandonment. Residents might literally feel “left behind,” giving rise to a form of collective low self-esteem or resentment. These sentiments can be politically mobilized by populist parties and politicians, who blame the decline on neglect by established political elites. While regional decline can result from long-term structural changes beyond any government’s immediate control, populist narratives often frame it as a deliberate political failure.²⁶⁴

Second, while much research emphasizes how immigration can increase anti-immigration sentiment, a growing body of work challenges this assumption. Under certain conditions, the presence of immigrants might actually reduce support for anti-immigration parties. This insight draws on the so-called contact hypothesis, which posits that intergroup contact—especially when cooperative and repetitive—can reduce prejudice.²⁶⁵

Studies have shown that extensive, cooperative interactions between majority and minority group members can undermine negative stereotypes and foster more tolerant attitudes.²⁶⁶ When contact is brief, superficial, or perceived as competitive, however, it may instead heighten anxiety and reinforce negative attitudes.

One important social arena is the workplace, where cooperative interactions between co-workers are often facilitated and encouraged. In this context, intergroup contact has the potential to reduce opposition to immigration. At the same time, the increased visibility of immigrants in the workplace might reinforce native-born workers’ fears of labor market competition—potentially more so than visibility in other everyday settings, such as public squares or supermarkets. Workplace contact can therefore have both positive and negative effects on attitudes toward immigration.

Using Swedish administrative data, one recent study investigates how increased exposure to foreign-born co-workers affects political preferences.²⁶⁷ The results suggest that intergroup contact can indeed reduce support for anti-immigration parties—but only in smaller workplaces and among co-workers of similar skill levels. In such settings, interactions are more likely to be intimate and sustained, often centered around shared goals. These conditions appear to offset fears of labor market competition with similarly skilled immigrant co-workers.

Conversely, the study finds that same-skill intergroup contact in large workplaces tends to increase opposition to immigration. In these environments, workers can more easily opt out of social interactions, leading to more superficial or incidental contact. Without the benefits of meaningful engagement, the perception of competition remains unmitigated.

Most importantly, the study shows that vulnerabilities in the labor market influence the effects of contact. Specifically, when immigrant co-workers become more visible in occupations characterized by high insecurity, such as office and customer service clerks, then opposition to immigration increases. The reverse is true for secure occupations, such as managers and associate professionals, where contact leads to decreased opposition to immigration. In short, workers who face real risks of losing their jobs are more likely to interpret the presence of immigrants as a threat to their employment prospects.

The distinction between meaningful and superficial intergroup contact helps explain why some studies find that increased immigration boosts support for anti-immigration parties, while others show the opposite. The quality and context of intergroup contact matter significantly.²⁶⁸

Together, these two perspectives—on emigration and on the moderating effects of intergroup contact—complicate the assumption that more immigration automatically generates demand for more restrictive policies. They underscore the importance of local context, social dynamics, and psychological perceptions in shaping political behavior.

Conclusion

There are many demand-side explanations for increased support for right-wing populist parties and various reasons why voters turn to them. Although immigration remains the most salient political issue for these parties—and for most of their voters—the existing evidence on the relationship between immigration and native-born voters’ propensity to support them is mixed.

At the same time, there is growing scholarly consensus that economic factors also play a key role in rising support for right-wing populist parties. They are widely believed to benefit from periods of economic downturn.

This essay highlights that economic and immigration-related explanations for rising support for right-wing populism are often intertwined rather than mutually exclusive. For instance, both increased immigration in native-born voters’ neighborhoods and negative shocks to their economic circumstances can heighten perceptions of competition over economic resources.

While these trigger factors differ, they can lead to similar outcomes—namely, increased support for more restrictive immigration policies. Immigration, as a trigger, might then translate into opposition to immigration through economic concerns. Likewise, economic insecurity can fuel demand for stricter immigration policies due to fears of increased competition from immigrants.

Yet increased local immigration can have the opposite effect, depending on the nature of intergroup interactions. Meaningful, repeated contact—particularly when characterized by cooperation—tends to reduce prejudice and lower opposition to immigration. The mixed empirical findings in the research can, in part, reflect differences in the quality and character of contact between native-born and foreign-born individuals.

Lastly, a growing body of research highlights the importance of another major demographic shift: emigration. Increased support for right-wing populist parties has been observed in areas where large shares of working-age residents have moved away—either to urban centers or abroad—resulting in both material and psychological consequences for those who remain. This dynamic adds yet another dimension to the broader puzzle of how and why voters are drawn to populist movements.

As such, policymakers seeking to stem the growing support for right-wing populism must consider all of the above when determining how to use immigration policy to garner more support among voters.

About the author

Sirus H. Dehdari is an associate senior lecturer in political science at Stockholm University. His work has been published in both political science and economics journals, including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, and American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.

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Overview

The poor quality of jobs in the United States is a slow-burning crisis that has been underway for many decades and has eroded many workers’ quality of life. Too many U.S. workers—especially but not exclusively workers without college degrees—are working in jobs with lower pay, lack of opportunities, and challenging work conditions, such as unstable schedules, all of which are detrimental to these workers’ well-being. 

In contrast, a good job can bring not only a paycheck but also meaning and social standing because it allows us to care for ourselves, our families, and contribute to something larger in our communities and our nation. Beyond earnings, the conditions of our work can affirm our dignity and our sense that our worth is recognized.²⁶⁹

As other essays in this project explain, the crisis of poor job quality has encouraged right-wing populist leaders to pitch divisive rhetoric to struggling workers and their families, even if their proposed policies do little to resolve the underlying crisis. This essay focuses on the drivers of poor job quality and concrete policy responses to address those drivers.  

The slow-burning job-quality crisis and its consequences, explained

Poor-quality jobs are by no means a new phenomenon in U.S. history, but the modern variant reached different industries and populations at different times starting in the 1970s and 1980s. The steady loss of manufacturing jobs and a decline in union power eroded job quality for many workers.²⁷⁰ Globalization and increased automation then hit, with some workers facing acute declines in their economic situations, as well as threats to their social standing.²⁷¹

Pressure from financial markets on employers to cut labor costs grew, too, and managers changed practices to reduce costs.²⁷² The rapid growth of the low-paid service sector as manufacturing jobs declined added new twists to poor jobs—unstable schedules and limited opportunities for advancement.²⁷³

Some groups, including White men working in manufacturing, have experienced real declines in job quality and economic security over their lives. Others have faced limited opportunities throughout their working lives, including Black workers, who still face hiring biases in many firms and industries.²⁷⁴ Those who experienced a slide and those who have long felt stuck may feel similarly frustrated, but they often are not united in pushing for change and may not see plausible strategies for collective action.

In recent years, unusually tight labor markets have provided some relief, pushing up wages for those at the bottom and creating some short-term leverage for better working conditions.²⁷⁵ Still, the broad trends in wages, benefits, and many other dimensions of work experience, unfolding over decades, have left many people with a sense that their lot at work is unfair and also out of their control.

Poor job quality and a sense of limited opportunities prompts anger, fear, and sadness about being disrespected and discarded at work, which plausibly leads to a sense of being disrespected and discarded in society more broadly. And that can push many workers and their loved ones to respond eagerly to politicians who articulate emotions of anger and fear and promise change.²⁷⁶ This assessment builds on a very strong research base linking job quality to mental health,²⁷⁷ as well as compelling qualitative studies making the connections to right-wing populism.²⁷⁸

We need to develop—and communicate—a more holistic understanding of job quality and its impact on workers, considering psychological and social, as well as economic, implications. The economic and psychological impacts of losing one’s job are well-known, but, additionally and critically, the remaining jobs are often of poor quality, and many feel their future options for good work will be limited.  

What policymakers need to understand to address the job-quality crisis

To develop a positive, holistic vision for improving job quality, policymakers need to be aware of the specific ways in which many Americans’ quality of work has declined in the past several decades. Specifically, these job-quality issues fall into at least seven areas:²⁷⁹

• Diminished purchasing power for low-wage workers
• Unstable work schedules
• Lack of paid leave
• Limited advancement opportunities for low-wage workers
• Lack of job security
• Work design and autonomy
• Gaps in worker voice

Diminished purchasing power for low-wage workers

Many federal laws regarding work and supporting workers have not been updated to reflect new economic realities. One obvious example is the U.S. federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, which has not increased since 2009 and has fallen, in real terms, by about 30 percent since then.²⁸⁰ The failure to update federal wage floors reinforces the sense that, while elite employees can negotiate what they need, large numbers of ordinary workers are stuck on the wrong side of growing income inequality.

In some areas, state and local ordinances have surpassed the federal minimum wage—often creating better conditions in progressive states and on the coasts.²⁸¹ Currently, 22 states have a minimum wage at or above $12 an hour, including California, Oregon, Washington state, Colorado, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts. But state minimum-wage laws seldom reach workers in regions that already feel “left behind.” The effective minimum wage is still $7.25 in 20 states, including Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Texas, and more.

Unstable work schedules

Earnings obviously depend on both wage rates and work schedules. Overall, workers value stable schedules and the flexibility to adjust hours as needed for personal reasons.²⁸² Yet there has been a clear trend toward more “just-in-time” or unstable scheduling practices, driven by employers.

Scheduling software helps tightly link schedules to variations in demand, based on sales by the day or even by the hour, leading to cancelled or shortened shifts, last-minute shift extensions, little advance notice of schedules, volatility in the number of hours worked across weeks, and limited say in schedules.²⁸³ These scheduling practices have negative consequences for economic security, including income volatility and difficulties holding a second job.²⁸⁴

Workers with unstable schedules are more likely to face economic hardships, including hunger, housing insecurity, and difficulty paying bills.²⁸⁵ Unstable schedules increase the odds of workers’ quitting their jobs, prompting lost earnings for these workers in the short run.²⁸⁶

Unstable schedules convey that employees are expected to be at the beck and call of employers. This workplace practice harms employees’ mental health and family life, as indicated by work-family conflicts, complex and more varied child care arrangements, and worse mental health among children whose parents or single parent have unpredictable schedules.²⁸⁷

Salaried employees also may experience frustrations about their earnings in relation to their work hours. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, salaried workers making more than $35,568 a year are not paid for overtime hours, which means some supervisors and lower-level managers work long hours without additional pay. In my own research, salaried IT professionals earning much more than that put in very long hours and responded to emails, text, and chat any time of day or night because they frantically hoped to hold on to their IT jobs threatened by offshoring and emerging technologies.²⁸⁸

Even with relatively high earnings and good benefits, then, some workers still felt “owned,” disrespected, and stressed. This adds further fuel to the poor-jobs crisis.

Lack of paid leave

The United States is the only rich, industrialized country with no paid leave policy for new parents, and we are among just a few countries without paid sick leave laws.²⁸⁹ A lack of leave can feel like a lack of respect, and workers resent feeling forced to choose between their job and taking care of their health and their families.

Federal policies have not kept up with increases in mothers’ labor force participation, men’s caregiving, and an aging population. The Family and Medical Leave Act, passed back in 1993, guarantees the job of a leave-taker but does not provide income replacement. Moreover, due to size, tenure, and hours requirements, only 56 percent of employees are covered by FMLA-guaranteed unpaid leave, and only 49 percent of workers with just a high school education are covered.²⁹⁰ The inequality is obvious, with higher-income workers much more likely to have access to job-protected or paid leaves.²⁹¹

Paid leave laws have been adopted by 13 states and Washington, DC. Again, most of the middle of the country has no guarantee of paid family leave, with the exceptions of Colorado and soon Minnesota.²⁹²

Limited advancement opportunities for low-wage workers

The possibility for advancement is a critical part of a quality job. Workplaces that provide training are valuable for moving up and building transferable skills that can lead to a good job elsewhere. About 59 percent of U.S. employed adults received some formal employer-provided skills training in the past year, and about 50 percent had gained skills via informal training from other employees.²⁹³ These opportunities, however, are not evenly available; training is less common for workers without a college degree, Hispanic workers, Black workers, contracted employees, and freelancers.²⁹⁴

Moreover, there has been a trend toward flattened firms, reductions in management positions, and outsourcing of some work roles, leaving many front-line workers without a clear career ladder for them to move up.²⁹⁵ While internal promotion systems have not disappeared, workers starting in low-paying occupations are more likely to move into higher-paying ones by switching employers than by staying with the same employers.²⁹⁶

Lack of job security

Job quality involves both adequate earnings and confidence that you can keep the job or find a similar one if needed. While the archetypal story in the news may be manufacturing workers who lost jobs to China, people in many white-collar occupations have faced job loss tied to offshoring, automation, and related pressures from financial markets to cut costs.

Job loss is often felt acutely as disrespect and triggers shame, even if workers are caught up in much broader trends.²⁹⁷ About half of Americans do not experience continuous employment through their 50s, and those unemployment spells reduce the odds of working into your 60s and beyond.²⁹⁸

Job insecurity also impacts those who manage to keep their jobs, negatively affecting health and pressuring those who “survive” a downsizing to do more and more with minimal complaint.²⁹⁹ Algorithmic management can prompt terminations, and often, front-line workers in warehouses, fast-food restaurants, and retail feel these decisions are out of their control.³⁰⁰ Insecurity is normalized, with persistent anxiety even among those who are currently employed.³⁰¹

Of course, job security is completely absent from nonstandard work, such as contracting, temp, and gig work. This built-in insecurity is not uniformly negative, however, as the appeal of this work is often the ability to set one’s own schedule. But this purported flexibility also creates pressure to always hustle, putting in long hours and lining up new options to weather possible decreased demand, increased competition, or changes in algorithms for those doing platform-based work.³⁰²

Work design and autonomy

The way that work is designed—the organization of tasks into jobs—matters to workers. To take one element of work design: Workers with more autonomy (discretion over how they do their work) and more variety in the tasks entailed in their work have better mental and physical health.³⁰³ The same job can be designed either to allow for autonomy or to narrowly specify every action, communicating to workers that they are interchangeable and not seen as capable of self-direction and judgment.

Some experimental studies find that changing work practices and policies to increase autonomy and variety can reduce psychological distress, perhaps because such changes signal respect.³⁰⁴ Yet in many workplace settings, new technologies have further reduced autonomy and opportunities to learn. Technological surveillance of individual productivity in production, logistics, and retail settings creates even greater pressure to speed through narrowly specified tasks.³⁰⁵

Gaps in worker voice

Voice at work—having a say and potentially influencing what happens in your organization—affirms workers’ dignity and worth, and can be conceptualized as a dimension of job quality.³⁰⁶ A workplace that welcomes and incorporates worker voice conveys that employees are valued for their ideas, not just the specific tasks they complete.

Yet today there is a sizable voice gap, captured by the difference workers report in the say or influence they believe they ought to have and the say they currently have. The largest gaps are on topics such as compensation, benefits, job security, and changes in technology.³⁰⁷

Working in an environment where you feel you can use your voice with confidence is associated with better well-being, higher job satisfaction, and less interest in quitting.³⁰⁸ What’s more, a field experiment in warehouses by me and my colleagues finds that a new voice channel—specifically, a committee of front-line workers and a few managers, who hear and respond to employees’ concerns and ideas—significantly reduces turnover and also improves mental health in the short term.³⁰⁹

Unions are a critical and classic channel for worker voice, providing a structured and collective process for elevating workers’ concerns and bargaining with management. General approval of unions has grown to 70 percent in 2024, a level not seen since the late 1970s, and younger workers are more supportive of unions than other workers.³¹⁰

Nonetheless, the percentage of U.S. workers who are members of a labor union has dropped from 20.1 percent in 1983 to 9.9 percent in 2024.³¹¹ This decline has implications not only for worker voice, but also for the financial and physical well-being of these workers and their families over the long term. Recent studies estimate that being a union member throughout one’s career results in an average of $1.3 million in additional lifetime earnings³¹² and also supports physical health.³¹³ Additionally, the racial wealth gap is narrower among union members.³¹⁴

As noted by other authors in this series, unions improve job quality and also connect workers in a “collective social fabric” that helps “increase workers’ social status and guard against the social divisiveness that is at the heart of right-wing populism.”³¹⁵

Directions for policy and practice to improve job quality

Policymakers need to pursue both familiar and new approaches for addressing the job-quality crisis and its implications for U.S. democracy. The focus is not on a novel approach but a coordinated vision for a fair future of work that takes into account the numerous ways in which job quality has declined. Specifically, policymakers need to take action to:

• Improve economic security
• Address the economic and care needs of working families
• Facilitate opportunities for job advancement and autonomy
• Support worker power and union organizing

Let’s delve into each in turn.

Improve economic security

While the federal minimum wage only applies to a small proportion of the workforce, updating it and ideally indexing it to inflation would improve job quality for a critical segment of low-wage workers and symbolize a renewed commitment to those earners across the entire nation. Many progressive states and cities have done more to set the minimum wage above the federal floor, but some movement also is evident in more conservative political contexts, with ballot measures passed in 2024 in Missouri and Alaska.³¹⁶ More states need to take this step in lieu of changes at the federal level.

Importantly, the evidence is clear that increasing the minimum wage does not reduce jobs. A recent review concludes that “minimum wage policies have had limited direct employment effects while significantly increasing the earnings of low-wage workers.”³¹⁷ Some research suggests, however, that injuries may rise in the wake of minimum-wage increases, perhaps because employers push workers harder to increase productivity.³¹⁸

Wage theft—including minimum-wage violations, failure to pay for all hours worked, and violations of overtime pay requirements—occurs routinely and is patently unfair.³¹⁹ The misclassification of workers as independent contractors when they should be counted as employees also robs them of minimum-wage protections and overtime pay, as well as Unemployment Insurance and coverage by other labor laws.³²⁰ Enforcement could certainly be increased, and the financial penalties for violations also should be adjusted to motivate compliance and level the playing field for firms that follow the law.³²¹

Currently, most employers who are identified as violating the minimum-wage law only pay back wages; civil monetary penalties are assessed in less than half of cases, even for repeat and/or willful violators.³²² Specifically, the Wages and Hours Division at the U.S. Department of Labor could levy back-pay damages and pursue civil monetary damages more aggressively. Additionally, some states have required violating employers to pay triple or quadruple back pay and have pursued criminal penalties for repeat offenders.³²³

Address the economic and care needs of working families

Earnings are critical to workers, but jobs also must work with employees’ personal and family responsibilities. Scheduling reforms and paid leave help people stay in decent or good jobs when they have them.

Scheduling laws, often referred to as fair workweek, fair scheduling, or predictive scheduling laws, aim to shift employers’ scheduling practices by requiring more stable schedules, advance notice of schedules, or commitments to minimum hours. These regulations are standard in many countries and could be expanded in the United States.

An evaluation of Seattle’s Secure Scheduling Ordinance, for example, finds that “eliminating schedule unpredictability would reduce the share of workers experiencing at least one material hardship by 45 percentage points (from 64% to 19%).”³²⁴ Additionally, that policy evaluation and a study of a stable-scheduling initiative at GAP Inc. stores find workers’ well-being and sleep improved with more schedule stability.³²⁵ The GAP study also demonstrates benefits to the firm via reduced turnover among experienced employees and increased productivity.³²⁶

Passing paid leave laws also is an important priority for improving job quality for working families. Laws enacted in 13 states and Washington, DC demonstrate feasibility.³²⁷ Paid leave recognizes workers’ legitimate needs and signals respect for workers and their families. Paid leave also supports economic security by keeping people employed and providing income replacement at a critical time.

California’s leave law, for example, nearly doubled access to pay during leaves, increasing benefits especially for low-income and less-educated workers and for men.³²⁸ New paid leave laws at the federal level would address these variations across states and help meet the needs of lower-income workers who are not as well-served by the federal unpaid family leave law and employer-provided benefits.

Facilitate opportunities for advancement and autonomy

Public policy can help expand collaborative training initiatives that engage multiple employers within a given industry. Such sectoral programs typically provide training for jobs in specific industries, such as health care, life sciences, and technology, that have both good starting wages and promotion opportunities.³²⁹

Rigorously evaluated programs, such as Project Quest and Year Up United, combine the training for these fields with soft-skills training, job-placement support, and a variety of services, including transportation support and child care. Successful sectoral programs increase employment in high-wage jobs, but public investments and long-term commitments are needed to scale these programs.³³⁰ For instance, the Economic Development Administration within the U.S. Department of Commerce recently supported new communities of practice focused on specific industries’ or regions’ workforce development initiatives.

Other strategies include encouraging employers to remove educational credentials from job listings when alternative training could prepare people for those jobs.³³¹ Yet research is needed on the impact of those changes. A recent audit study finds employers are less likely to hire applicants with alternative training and related work experience than degree holders; this is still true for employers who have removed educational credentials from their job postings.³³²

Policymakers also can also champion and incentivize employers who design work with autonomy and learning in mind. A long tradition of “high-performance work systems” research finds that the combination of certain practices, such as building autonomy, cross-training and other skills development, and performance-based pay, can improve productivity, raise pay in some settings, and also support workers’ well-being.³³³

Public procurement policies that incorporate job-quality data could encourage employers to design work in these ways.³³⁴ Additionally, local policymakers and community leaders can establish community benefit agreements with developers and new employers, encouraging job-quality standards, the hiring of local workers, and more.³³⁵

Support worker power and union organizing

Worker power, including collective bargaining by unions, can advance all the elements of job quality discussed here. To protect workers’ rights to organize and pursue their own job-quality priorities, we need to strengthen the enforcement of existing laws and ideally update federal labor law as well.³³⁶

Given how few U.S. workers are currently represented by unions and the limitations of current federal law, though, it is also important to pursue organizing innovations and state and local changes.³³⁷ One such innovation is the industry standard board, also known as a workforce standard board or sectoral co-regulation. These boards involve employers, state officials, and worker representatives in certain industries. They give workers a formalized role in setting wage rates and benefits, often improving pay for those already above the minimum wage. Additionally, these boards can support the effective enforcement of labor laws, acting as partners to educate workers, employers, and the broader community.³³⁸

“Bargaining for the common good” is another strategic innovation in which unions and other local organizations develop integrated campaigns focused on community concerns, such as housing, climate, racial justice, schools, and also decent jobs.³³⁹ This approach may foster solidarity across people with different employment statuses, work experiences, and backgrounds and provide a path toward feeling respected and recognized both at work and in the larger community.

Vision 2020

Fair work schedules for the U.S. economy and society: What’s reasonable, feasible, and effective

By Susan Lambert,

February 18, 2020

In Conversation

In Conversation with Daron Acemoglu

By Kathryn Zickuhr,

May 8, 2023

report

Estimating the prevalence of automated management and surveillance technologies at work and their impact on workers’ well-being

By Alexander Hertel-Fernandez,

October 1, 2024

Conclusion

This may seem like a daunting set of policy challenges, but the time to begin articulating a better vision of work is now. Rebuilding a fair economy over the next decade is particularly critical because of expected disruptions in the U.S. labor market tied to AI technologies and transitions in energy production. As jobs are altered and many jobs are lost while others emerge, there is a clear risk of greater alienation and despair unless another model of quality work is on the horizon.

About the author

Erin L. Kelly is the Sloan Distinguished Professor of Work and Organization Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management and co-director of the MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research.

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