A new academic study of state economies suggests there’s a hidden deduction lurking in Illinois union workers’ paychecks. Turns out anti-union states like Texas and Indiana overly rely on the federal taxes paid by union workers in other states to prop up their economies.

From the University of Illinois report …
While workers in right-to-work states account for just 37.4 percent of all federal income tax revenues, they receive 41.9 percent of all non-health, non-retirement government assistance, the paper says.

“Essentially, what that means is workers in collective bargaining states – New York, California and Illinois, to name a few – are subsidizing the low-wage model of employment in right-to-work states such as Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.”

The research paper goes on to estimate that if Illinois had adopted a right to work law in 2013, it would have increased the need for government assistance through food stamps and other programs by $440 million because of lost worker protections and declining pay.

Read the University of Illinois’ summary of the research.

Read the full research paper.