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Even if you're a man who doesn't belong to a union, you're $3,000 a year poorer because unions are not as strong as they use to be, a new study found.

An Economic Policy Institute study found wages would be $2,700 to $3,000 higher a year for male employees if unions still represented as much of the workforce as they did in 1979. The liberal Washington D.C.-based think tank found non-union workers lose about $133 billion annually due to the decline in unions and that it's "the overlooked reason why wages are stuck and inequality is growing."

Authors Jake Rosenfeld, Patrick Denice and Jennifer Laird found the effect was not as substantial on non-union women, who were not as unionized as men in 1979. They would be making about 2 percent to 3 percent more today if union membership were at the level it was in the late 1970s.

About 11.1 percent of the workforce belonged to unions last year, down from about 35 percent in the 1950s, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

A male nonunion worker would make about $52 more a week, or 5 percent more, in 2013 if private-sector unions still represented as much of the workforce as they did in 2013, the Economic Policy Institute found.