Tracking National Labor Relations Board actions through its administrative data

Introduction

Unions represent over 6 percent of private-sector workers in the U.S. The share of the workforce represented by a union depends, in part, on whether and when new unions form. Most private-sector workers can either form a union through voluntary recognition by their employer or by holding an election overseen by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

In this analysis, we use administrative data from the NLRB to assess the number of cases the NLRB closed, the reason those cases closed, and the number of new cases filed in 2025, compared to recent years.

Monitoring NLRB actions has become especially relevant in recent months because the national five-seat appointed governing body (hereafter, “the Board”) lacks a quorum, meaning that there are fewer than three Board members. In January, President Trump fired Board Member Gwynne Wilcox, leaving the Board with two members: David Prouty and Marvin Kaplan. In July, President Trump nominated James Murphy, a former NLRB lawyer, and Scott Mayer, a corporate lawyer, to serve in two of the three Board member vacancies. If either is confirmed, the NLRB would have the membership necessary for a quorum.

While the national Board lacking quorum raises concerns about the NLRB’s ability to process their already large caseload, most cases can be resolved by regional directors. Consistent with that, NLRB regional directors have cumulatively closed a similar number of cases in 2025 when compared to recent years in which both the Board and regional director closed cases (figure 3). Tracking this administrative data will allow us to better understand trends in union formation in the long term and across administrations.

What is the National Labor Relations Board?

1. What are the NLRB’s primary functions?

The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (NLRA) gives the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) authority to enforce employee protections. Namely, Section 7 of the Act guarantees most private-sector employees “the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.

The NLRB conducts union representation elections. As the NLRB explains, in these representation elections, a “union that receives a majority of the votes cast is certified as the employees’ bargaining representative and is entitled to be recognized by the employer as the exclusive bargaining agent for the employees in the unit.” Using the NLRB’s administrative data, one can track when employees file a representation petition (denoted as “R” cases), when the NLRB closes that case, and the reason it closed, among other dimensions.

The NLRB also manages employer-employee relations by investigating unfair labor practices. This often intersects with employees’ efforts to unionize, with the NLRB sometimes taking enforcement action to protect employees’ unionization rights. For instance, Section 8(a)(1) of the NLRA states that it’s an unfair labor practice to “interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in Section 7.” One can track the NLRB’s actions on unfair labor practices cases in the administrative data (denoted as “C” cases).

2. What can the NLRB do without a quorum?

The NLRB is made up of a five-member national Board (“the Board”) and 26 regional office directors. Union election petitions and unfair labor practices are filed at the regional office level, where most cases are resolved. If a regional office finds an unfair labor practice case has merit, the office will take the case before an administrative law judge (ALJ), which will hear the case and issue a decision. Cases issued by ALJs can be appealed to the Board. However, when the Board has fewer than three members, and consequently lacks a quorum, it cannot issue decisions. This has several implications for the NLRB’s work.

First, the Board stops ruling on requests for review, which parties can file at various points of a representation petition case. Second, while regional directors can issue complaints to ALJs, an ALJ appeal to the Board cannot be decided on during a period without a quorum. Third, the Board stops seeking enforcement of its rulings in the United States Court of Appeals. However, as discussed below, many cases continue even when the NLRB lacks a quorum.

In the past, there were periods without quorum when the Board still issued decisions, such as the period between January 1, 2008, to March 27, 2010. In response, the Supreme Court in New Process Steel v. NLRB held that “the delegation clause requires that a delegee group maintain a membership of three in order to exercise the delegated authority of the Board.” This decision means that the Board must have three members to publish a decision.

Figure 1 shows published national Board decisions from 1935 to today (users can also zoom to 2010 to present). After President Trump reduced the Board to two members, there were no Board decisions in February 2025. The Board published three decisions in March 2025 when Board Member Wilcox was temporarily reinstated. When Board Member Wilcox was removed again at the end of March, the Board did not publish decisions in April through July of 2025. (Wilcox was reinstated in April for a few days.) Note that the NLRB issues both published and unpublished decisions and needs a quorum to issue either.

Between the first month with a Board decision (December 1935) and December 2024, there were only four months in which the NLRB published no decisions: December 1993, January 1994, January 2002, August 2013. Between January and July of this year, there have been five.

Just because the national Board stops issuing decisions doesn’t mean a complete work stoppage, as much of the agency’s business can proceed through regional offices, the general counsel, the executive secretary, and the chief administrative law judge. In fact, efforts have been made to continue operations during periods without quorums: The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) states that “[w]hen the Board lacks a quorum normal Agency operations should continue to the greatest extent permitted by law.”

Most relevant for this analysis, guidance from the NLRB affirms that regional directors can continue processing representation (“R”) and unfair labor practices (“C”) petitions when the Board lacks quorum. Despite this authority, the uncertainty at the Board level could delay case progress. For example, despite the NLRB guidance, Whole Foods filed a lawsuit earlier this year seeking to overturn a union election at a Philadelphia store, which won an election for representation by a vote of 130 to 100, because “the board’s regional director ‘lacks authority’ to ‘lawfully certify’ the result of the union’s win.”

3. What is the current state of NLRB caseloads?

For years, the NLRB has maintained case backlogs. This is in part due to the agency’s funding levels, which remained the same for nearly a decade and increased only slightly in more recent years (in nominal terms). In 2008, one NLRB full-time employee was responsible for 58,200 private-sector workers. By 2023, that number had risen to 90,700. Despite being resource constrained and facing surges in petition filings in recent years, the NLRB has reduced case processing times.

In February, the NLRB’s Acting General Counsel William B. Cowen addressed the NLRB’s case backlog, stating: “[…] we have seen our backlog of cases grow to the point where it is no longer sustainable. The unfortunate truth is that if we attempt to accomplish everything, we risk accomplishing nothing.”

Figure 2 shows a recent snapshot of the number of employees eligible to vote in pending petitions for representation elections (“R” cases, not including petitions for decertification), as a share of all private nonagricultural wage and salary employees in that state. Approximately 64,000 workers are waiting for representation, including 5,200 Mercedes Benz employees in Alabama and employees at casinos in Nevada.

Tracking NLRB activity

1. Despite the national Board’s lack of quorum, the NLRB is still closing cases.

Figure 3 is a data interactive where users can compare the number of cases closed or the number of employees covered in closed cases by case type and for different time periods. Users can look at just R petitions (representation), just C petitions (unfair labor practices), or all form types. Click the “>” to select years, case type, petition type, and frequency.

Among R petitions, users can then view all representation cases, or by certain petition types, including Amendment of Certification, Certification of Representative, Certification of Representative (filed by employer), Certification of Representative as Bona Fide, Deauthorization of Shop Authority (removal of obligation to pay dues), Decertification (removal of representative), or Unit Clarification (clarifying scope of unit). Among unfair labor practices cases (“C” cases), users can also select by petition type, including unfair labor practices by the employer and unfair labor practices by the labor organization, and other administrative infractions or clarifications.

As of August 21, 2025, the NLRB has closed approximately 1,700 representation cases, which is approximately 400 cases fewer than at the same time last year (figure 3). However, this year-to-date 2025 total is higher than every other year since 2017. As of August 21, 2025, the NLRB has closed about 11,800 unfair labor practice cases—about 1,600 to 1,900 more than 2023 or 2024.

In Certification of Representative (RC) cases alone, a little more than 84,000 employees gained representation this year as of August 21, 2025, compared to 128,000 employees in 2024 and 190,000 employees in 2023 by this time. Weighting the cases by the number of employees may not reflect the NLRB’s processing times, but rather union organizing capacity, demand for unions, and the idiosyncratic timing of case closures.

2. There has been a slight uptick in the share of closed cases that are withdrawn, compared to cases that complete their election.

One can also track the reason that cases close (figure 4). For example, cases can close not only because employees win their election for representation, but because the NLRB dismisses the case or because the party that submitted the petition withdraws their case, among other reasons. Between December 2024 and July 2025, the share of total closed election cases that closed because employees newly won representation decreased slightly, from 52 percent to 44 percent.

Over that same period, the share of withdrawn cases increased from 23 percent to 31 percent, the share of lost elections for new representation increased from 14 to 16 percent, and the share of decertification decreased from 6 percent to 2 percent. The shares of closed unfair labor practices cases have been more stagnant since December 2024, with the share of withdrawn cases charged against the employer fluctuating slightly but remaining close to a quarter.

3. The pace of new petition filings is in line with recent years.

Apart from NLRB operations, the case backlog largely depends on the pace of new filings. Figure 5 shows the number of total new filings, filings for representation, filings for unfair labor practice cases, and the number of employees covered in these filings. Click the “>” to select years, case type, petition type, and frequency. Monitoring petition filings through the remainder of the year may show how petitioners approached the uncertainty at the federal level.

As of August 21, 2025, the number of new election case filings (1,800) is lower compared to last year (2,200) but higher than most other recent years. The cumulative number of unfair labor practice cases filed year-to-date is more consistent across years: In 2025, approximately 12,000 cases have been filed year-to-date, which is within the range for recent years (9,700 in 2021 to 13,600 in 2024).

Other measures to monitor

The NLRB action trackers produced above are neither exhaustive nor a comprehensive view of the factors inside and outside the Board that affect unionization and union coverage. Other scholars and the NLRB itself have tracked additional measures, such as case processing time and the election win rate. According to the NLRB, the median days from case assignment to decision issuance decreased by 14 percent between FY 2021 and FY 2022, from 91 days to 78 days; despite this, that number rose to 117 days in FY 2023 according to the FY 2023 midwinter report.

The union “win rate” shows the share of unions that successfully receive certification, conditional on having organized and filed for an election. The win rate increased from 62.7 percent in 2008 to 73.8 percent in 2024. The NLRB averaged a 70.3 percent union election win rate from 2021 to June 2024 (Biden administration), compared to a 66.1 percent win rate under the first Trump administration. Additionally, a report from the Economic Policy Institute found that although 0.46 percent of workers in 1966 to 1968 completed all the stages of the “unionizing finish line” (participation in elections, successful elections, and winning a first contract), only 0.17 percent of workers completed all three by 1978 to 1980.

Finally, one can also monitor the existence and usage of the blocking charge, which empowers regional directors to delay elections if there’s an accompanying unfair labor practices allegation against the employer. The blocking charge was reinstated in a final rule effective September 30, 2024.