- The District of Columbia ranks best for workers, per Oxfam's new report.
- California, Oregon, and New York also have high wages and strong worker protections.
- Southern states have fewer worker-friendly laws despite becoming new economic hubs.
If you want high wages — and a strong union — you might want to head to the nation's capital.
The District of Columbia ranks higher than any state on a new index from Oxfam measuring which US states are best for workers. You can chalk that up to the district's high minimum wage and robust unemployment benefits, two of the key policies that help dictate one of the dimensions Oxfam uses in its ratings.
Other top states include California, Oregon, and New York — all of which are ranked highly for enshrining the right for workers to organize in law. At the bottom of the list sit Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and North Carolina; per Oxfam, those states have consistently ranked lowest in the organization's annual index for the last several years.
This comes as the South — and the Sunbelt more broadly — has become a new economic center. As the cost of living, including housing, has grown exponentially in many of the country's traditional economic powerhouse cities, many workers have moved South. Sunbelt metros like Gainesville, Georgia, and Hilton Head Island in South Carolina, are leading the country in job creation, according to a recent analysis from the Economic Innovation Group.
But while many remote workers have taken advantage of a lower cost of living in the South, workers in more blue-collar occupations may not benefit as much.
"If COVID taught us anything, it's that remote work is a privilege only certain workers are able to enjoy. Our index focuses on policies that would most benefit low-wage workers, many of whom do not receive employer benefits such as paid sick or family leave – much less the ability to work remotely," Dr. Kaitlyn Henderson, report author and senior researcher at Oxfam America, told Business Insider.
The Oxfam report looks at three dimensions of what makes a state worker-friendly: Wages, worker protections, and the right to organize. Wages are weighted the most out of those three categories; key policies tracked in that dimension include the ratio of the state minimum wage to the wage needed to sustain a household of four, that same ratio for unemployment payments, and whether the state lets its localities have control over raising their minimum wages.
Worker protection makes up 35% of the score; key policies factored into the ranking include equal pay mandates targeting the gender pay gap, paid sick and family leave, child labor protections, limiting quotas for warehouse workers, and heat safety standards.
And, finally, the right to organize makes up 25% of the total composite score. The key policies Oxfam tracks there include whether states have right-to-work laws, which allow workers to opt out of joining unions but still benefit from their contracts, whether teachers are able to organize, and whether the state has laws that protect workers from employer retaliation.
The right to organize has been particularly controversial in the South in recent years. The Republican governors of Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee have all passed laws stripping away state incentives for companies that voluntarily recognize labor unions.
The GOP governors of South Carolina, Texas, and Mississippi joined the aforementioned states in issuing a statement deriding the United Auto Workers campaign to organize workers at car manufacturing plants across the South.
Oxfam gave Texas, South Carolina, and Georgia a score of zero out of one hundred on rights to organize, while Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama earned a score of 10.