To follow up on my Labor Day column, Nate Silver has written a very useful post plotting pro-union sentiment against the unemployment rate.

The regression line finds that, for every point’s worth of increase in the unemployment rate, approval of labor unions goes down by 2.6 points. Alternatively, we can add a time trend to the regression model, to account for the fact that participation in labor unions has been declining over time. This softens the relationship slightly, but still implies a decrease in approval of 2.1 points for unions for every point increase in unemployment. Both relationships are highly statistically significant.

This makes intuitive sense; during a straitened economic moment, the public is more concerned with retaining their jobs or with job growth than with collective action. Interestingly, Bob McDonnell’s gubernatorial campaign has very effectively used its opposition to card-check as a wedge issue against Democrats in Virginia, one of many reasons why Creigh Deeds is trying to shift the debate towards social issues.