Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Religion

  • short reads

    Most Americans view unions favorably, though few workers belong to one

    Most Americans like labor unions, at least in the abstract. A majority (55%) holds a favorable view of unions, versus 33% who hold an unfavorable view, according to a Pew Research Center survey from earlier this year. Despite those fairly benign views, unionization rates in the United States have dwindled in recent decades. As of 2017, just 10.7% of all wage and salary workers were union members, matching the record low set in 2016, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

  • short reads

    Q&A: The challenges of creating a religious typology

    This new analysis creates a typology that cuts across denominations, sorting Americans into seven groups, or “clusters,” based on their religious practices and values, their views about religion in general, and the sources of meaning and fulfillment in their lives. Rich Morin, a senior editor at the Center, explains how the study was put together, and discusses the role of cluster analysis in creating the typology.

  • short reads

    From the Solidly Secular to Sunday Stalwarts, a look at our new religious typology

    Most American adults identify with a religion, describing themselves as Protestants, Catholics or Jews, to name just a few examples. But a new Pew Research Center analysis looks at beliefs and behaviors that cut across many religious identities, producing a new and revealing classification, or typology, of religion in America that sorts U.S. adults into seven cohesive groups.

  • report

    The Religious Typology

    A new analysis looks at beliefs and behaviors that cut across many religious denominations – important traits that unite people of different faiths, or that divide those of the same religious affiliation.

  • short reads

    The world’s most committed Christians live in Africa, Latin America – and the U.S.

    Christians in Africa and Latin America tend to pray more frequently, attend religious services more regularly and consider religion more important in their lives than Christians elsewhere in the world, according to a recent Pew Research Center study. At the same time, Christians in the United States also have comparatively high levels of commitment to their faith.

  • short reads

    Why America’s ‘nones’ don’t identify with a religion

    Six-in-ten religious “nones” in the U.S. say the questioning of religious teachings is a very important reason for their lack of affiliation. The second-most-common reason is opposition to the positions taken by churches on social and political issues.

  • short reads
    Americans' paychecks are bigger than 40 years ago, but their purchasing power has hardly budged

    For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged in decades

    Despite some ups and downs over the past several decades, today’s real average wage in the U.S. has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. And most of what wage gains there have been have flowed to the highest-paid tier of workers.

  • report

    Why Americans Go (and Don’t Go) to Religious Services

    In recent years, the percentage of U.S. adults who say they regularly attend religious services has been declining, while the share of Americans who attend only a few times a year, seldom or never has been growing. A new Pew Research Center survey finds that the main reason people regularly go to church, synagogue, mosque […]

  • short reads

    Americans are far more religious than adults in other wealthy nations

    Americans pray more often, are more likely to attend weekly religious services and ascribe higher importance to faith in their lives than adults in other wealthy, Western democracies, such as Canada, Australia and most European states, according to a recent Pew Research Center study.