Two conversations built around a single question: what does real economic security look like for working people — and who is actually delivering it?

United Labor Agency Executive Director Dave Megenhardt closes out a strong program year with 1,002 job placements at an average wage of $23.58 per hour, climbing to $28.78 for workers who completed vocational training first. He discusses healthcare's continued dominance in Northeast Ohio placements, the gig-like patchwork of hours many entry-level workers still face, the cautious and still-undecided employer posture toward artificial intelligence and why the AFL-CIO's insistence on worker inclusion in AI decisions matters. He also announces the opening of a brand new Ohio Means Jobs center at 1975 East 61st Street in Cleveland — a newly renovated building replacing a Carnegie Avenue location displaced by a highway expansion project — and shares that ULA is actively hiring career transition counselors.

Center for American Progress Senior Fellow David Madland presents new research showing the typical union household holds approximately $460,000 in wealth compared to $220,000 for non-union households — more than double. He breaks down why the gains are largest for Black workers, Hispanic workers and those without a college degree and addresses a new Department of Labor financial disclosure rule targeting large unions alongside the Trump administration's simultaneous retreat from corporate anti-bribery enforcement and the weakening of the DOJ's Public Integrity Division.

Visit ulagency.org for more on the United Labor Agency and americanprogress.org for the full CAP wealth report.

The first drone is expected off the assembly line this week at an Anduril manufacturing campus in Pickaway County that didn't exist eighteen months ago. Data center and power plant construction is breaking ground in Asheville. A $325 million courthouse is going up in downtown Columbus under a community benefit agreement. And the Columbus building trades are on pace to work more than 20 million hours in 2026 — more than double just three years ago.

On today's trades day episode of America's Work Force Union Podcast, Columbus Central Ohio Building and Construction Trades Council Executive Secretary-Treasurer Dorsey Hager delivers a monthly update that covers all of it — plus a nurses organizing drive at Children's Hospital, the airport expansion hitting 83 percent union, why women in Local Unions have quadrupled since 2016 and what America's 250th birthday means to a union trades leader who owes everything he has to the labor movement.

Visit columbusconstruction.org for more.

The top 1 percent of American households now hold 31.7 percent of all U.S. wealth — the highest concentration since the Federal Reserve began tracking in 1989. Workers' wages are not keeping pace with their productivity. And the AFL-CIO just came out of what its secretary-treasurer called the best convention he has attended in twenty years.

On today's episode of America's Work Force Union Podcast — the day before America's 250th anniversary — AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond discusses the Minneapolis convention's 2-million-member organizing goal, why that number is the floor rather than the ceiling and the federation's carefully calibrated position on artificial intelligence: not opposition, but a demand that workers have a seat at the table in every decision that affects their jobs.

He also addresses Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger's veto of collective bargaining legislation after AFL-CIO leaders left a campaign meeting believing they had her full support — and explains the strict endorsement standard the federation has adopted in response heading into the midterms.

Visit aflcio.org for more.