Going on strike is always risky for workers, because they can be permanently replaced, said Michele Evermore, a senior fellow at the left-leaning think tank The Century Foundation who studies unemployment. “They don’t have to just deal with the uncertainty of unemployment, but they also have to go out on strike lines,” she said. “It’s not a lazy person’s sport.”

Most states also allow benefits to workers affected by a strike as long as they are not “participating in the dispute, financing it or directly interested in it,” Michele Evermore, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, a progressive, independent think tank, said in a recent blog post on the think tank’s website. Evermore said in some states though, such as Michigan, workers who work for a firm where there is a labor dispute are not eligible for unemployment benefits if they lose work during the strike, even if they are not in the bargaining unit.

Worker activism rose during the coronavirus pandemic, and a tight labor market has given employees more power to negotiate. “These are public benefits that should be there for workers when their workplace is so unsatisfactory that they take the extraordinary step to go on strike,” said Michele Evermore, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation. “They need support just like any other worker.”

Economists warn against making too much of a single data point, but say the latest spike in involuntary part-time work could be a harbinger of layoffs to come, especially when combined with other signs of slowing in the job market. “Looking at this indicator — along with two straight months of decline in Black employment — gives me a bit of pause,” said Michele Evermore, senior fellow at the Century Foundation and former deputy director at the Labor Department. “I don’t mean to be Chicken Little here, but this does tend to be a leading indicator that things are starting to slow down.”