Monday Miscellany, 9/8/25

Church going among Generation Z has doubled since 2020.  Barna found that on average, 13-28 year old Christians go to church 1.9 times per month.  Attendance on the part of Millennials (29-44) has also doubled, to 1.8 times. Generation X (45-60) is at the national average of 1.6 times.  Baby Boomers (61-79) and Elders (older than 79) are both church-dodging slackers by comparison at 1.4 times.

Of course, these numbers are for Christians, not for the large number of “Nones” in these categories.  And it would be better to have the monthly church-going averages approach 4, rather than 2.

But still, no one can really call Christianity an “old person’s religion” anymore.  It isn’t just a matter of reaching young people.  In fact, churches may need to do more to reach old people.  (To be fair, many of us Baby Boomers and lots of Elders are now “shut-ins” who are physically unable to go to church, but appreciate visits from their pastors and all of these young adults.)

We’ve blogged about the problems of Generation Z and Millennials , but those problems no doubt give many of them the “felt need” to go to church.

American Farmers Are in Trouble

One of the most important vocations is that of farmer.  We can do without professional athletes and entertainers, whom we reward with far more money, but we cannot do without the people who raise our food.  But right now, those folks, to whom we owe our very lives, are really struggling.

Jason Ma of Fortune Magazine tells the tale in his article Rural America is suffering an economic crisis as crop prices plunge.

Corn prices have declined 50% since 2022, while production costs remain high.  That means farmers are losing 85 cents a bushel.  The same with soybeans, the price of which is down 40%.

Why is this?  Trade disputes and retaliatory tariffs.  China was the American farmer’s biggest customer for soybeans, but in retaliation for tariffs against them, the country with the world’s second-biggest population is buying its soybeans solely from Brazil.

American farmers have not only been feeding us, they have been feeding the world.  But absent a big number of those international markets, the supply piles up and the prices go down.  Though in the case of the meat industry, farmers have responded to the hostile international markets by culling their herds, resulting in a supply shortage, sending meat prices for Americans soaring.

Some trade deals will help.  Indonesia and Bangladesh have promised to buy U.S. produce in return for a lower tariff rate, and Vietnam and the Philippines are reportedly making the same offer in their negotiations.  Also, the Big Beautiful Bill includes $66 billion to prop up the agriculture industry.

In addition to low prices, farmers are also trying to cope with lower production, due to the labor shortage in agriculture.  This is due to the immigration crackdown.  Agriculture employment is down by 155,000 workers, the biggest drop in a decade.  A good number of those workers were illegal immigrants.

NPR interviewed a Florida strawberry farmer who admitted that up to half of his seasonal workers were here illegally, although this year he is only hiring workers with the right papers.  Temporary workers can come into the country on an H2A visa.  Farmers say they are now paying H2A visa holders more than the minimum wage.  They are required to post openings to American residents as a condition for qualifying for the H2A program, but they get hardly any takers.

The Further Decline of Labor Unions

In other work-related news, membership in labor unions has continued its long decline, reaching a new milestone.

Today, membership in labor unions has fallen below 10% of the workforce for the first time.  Only 5.9% of private sector workers are unionized.

Overall, half of today’s union members are government employees, who make up 15% of the workforce.  One third of today’s unionized employees belong to teachers’ unions.

This is to say, today’s labor unions largely represent not so much blue collar workers as white collar workers.

Why is that?  The Biden administration made a big push to promote unions by making it easier for employees to organize.  But, evidently, judging from the votes on whether or not to unionize, lots of blue collar workers don’t want to belong to a union.

Why don’t they?  Is this “false consciousness,” as Marxists would say, in which the working class is so controlled that they don’t follow their own interests?  Or is it that unions are perceived as doing little for workers beyond raking in their union dues?  Have unions been taken over by their white collar constituency and leadership, turning off those who work with their hands?

Companies, of course, don’t like unions.  That includes the tech sector, which for all its liberal virtue signaling is notoriously anti-union.  Perhaps there are fewer union members because the most successful companies that are doing the most hiring aren’t union shops.  Maybe they can get away with this by offering good wages in line with market value as a way of keeping out the labor organizers.  Or maybe most of our manufacturing has gone overseas to lands of low wages and no unions, leaving the U.S.A. with fewer union-type jobs.

President Biden trumpeted his support of unions, to the point of being the first president to walk a picket line.  His $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill required the use of union contractors.  I wonder if its slow rollout and meager results had anything to do with there just not being enough union contractors to do the work.