Americans have lost confidence in everything from organized religion to Congress, but their faith in unions is staying strong

• A new Gallup polls shows Americans don't have much confidence in many major institutions.
• Of the 16 institutions like the Supreme Court in Gallup's survey, just one saw confidence not fall.

Americans aren't feeling too great about, well, anything right now — except for organized labor.

Every year, Gallup surveys Americans about their confidence in different institutions from public schools, to banks, to organized religion. This year, Gallup asked Americans about 16 "major institutions" throughout June. The results: They're not very confident in everything, with confidence overall across 14 institutions that Gallup surveys on every year at a record low.

For instance, from 2021 to 2022, people who said they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the presidency fell by 15%, and confidence in the Supreme Court also fell by 11%. Even organized religion took a 6% hit.

Of the 16 institutions that Gallup polled on, just one didn't see confidence drop: Organized labor. In 2021, 28% of respondents said they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in organized labor. That was true in 2022 as well.

Democrats still have the most confidence in organized labor, with 41% saying that they have a great deal or a lot of confidence in it — the same figure as 2021. Republicans' confidence in organized labor grew from 13% to 15%, while independents were more skeptical, with their confidence falling from 28% to 27%.

The stable confidence in organized labor comes after a year of prominent union efforts from the likes of workers at behemoths like Starbucks and Amazon — and one where the court of public opinion is playing a larger role in organizing drives. Indeed, Gallup found in 2021 that approval of labor unions was at 65% — its highest level since 1965. Approval was particularly high among Democrats, younger workers, and lower-earning workers.

Liz Shuler, the president of the country's largest labor federation, the AFL-CIO, previously told Insider that the perception of organized labor has "changed dramatically" in the past year. In 2021, 140,000 workers walked out of work, and there were 265 work stoppages, according to researchers at Cornell University's ILR School, who created the ILR Labor Action Tracker.

Even so, union membership remained low and fell yet again in 2021. The union membership rate dipped from 10.8% in 2020 to 10.3% in 2021, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2020, 14.3 million workers were in a union; in 2021, just 14 million were — far below historic membership highs, and following a trend of decades of decline. Labor advocates attribute that decline to restrictive labor law making it difficult to organize.