Lonnie Stevans, Professor of Information Technology and Quantitative Methods at Hofstra University, tested this claim by comparing the business formation and economic growth of right-to-work states with non-right-to-work states using recent data from the U.S. Small Business Administration.  Stevans controlled for variables like education levels, population changes, and type of employment in the states to accurately measure the relationship between right-to-work laws and economic growth.

Stevans found that a state’s right-to-work law:

• Has no impact on economic growth
• Has no influence on employment
• Has no influence on business capital formation (the ratio of firm ‘births’ to the number of firms)
• Is correlated with a decrease in wages

Stevan’s analysis of right-to-work states also yielded the following observations:

• The average real state GDP growth rate of right-to-work states is not significantly different than non-right-to-work states
• The average per capita income in right-to-work states is lower than in non-right-to-work states

Stevans concluded his analysis with the following observation:

“…From a state’s economic standpoint, being right-to-work yields little or no gain in employment and real economic growth.”

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Lonnie K. Stevans, Hofstra University, REVIEW OF LAW AND ECONOMICS, 2009.