While the number of U.S. work stoppages decreased overall by nearly 16% over the past year, the health care industry saw a 58.3% jump in work stoppages and a 151.9% increase in the number of workers involved, according to a report published Feb. 18 by the School of Industrial and Labor Relations and the University of Illinois School of Labor and Employment Relations.
The accommodation and food services industry saw 59 work stoppages - the highest number of any industry. But while the health care industry accounted for fewer strikes - 57 - it included the highest number of workers.
"The significant increases in work stoppages in health care are a signal of a number of factors joining together to create a labor-relations perfect storm," said Ariel Avgar, Ph.D. '88, director of the Center for Applied Research on Work.
Three major issues face health care workers, Avgar said: An immense pressure to improve patient care outcomes while simultaneously containing costs; frustrations about the gap between the post-COVID language of "essential workers" and actual working conditions; and economic headwinds and the rising cost of living.
"Taken together, health care-specific pressures, a frustration over the gap between the rhetoric of essentiality and the actual working conditions, I don't expect this work-stoppage increase to subside in the near future," said Avgar, the David M. Cohen Professor of Labor Law and History.
The increase in work stoppages among health care workers is one of "the more surprising findings" from the 2025 report, said Johnnie Kallas, Ph.D. '23, who launched the Labor Action Tracker in 2021 and is now an assistant professor at the University of Illinois School of Labor and Employment Relations.
