Workers across the country experience a “union premium” — an increase in wages for workers who belong to a labor union compared to workers who are not organized. That premium amounted to $1.24 per hour last year, a 17.3 percent premium. And according to a new study from the Economic Policy Institute, union membership is even more important for African American and Latino workers, whose union premiums exceed that of white workers.

Black union members have a union premium of $2.60, earning them about 17.3 percent more than black non-union workers. Black men who belong to a union see a 20 percent increase over the normal wage; for black women, the increase is 14.8 percent. Union membership is even more beneficial to Latinos, whose men and women workers earn union premiums of 29.3 percent and 15.7 percent, respectively. (Latinos’ union premium is 23.1 percent overall.):

The importance of union membership to blacks and Latinos is significant, given that both groups are already disadvantaged in the American economy. Both groups have unemployment rates that are far higher than the nation’s 8.3 percent rate. Black unemployment, in fact, has spent most of the last five decades above 10 percent. Black and Latino women are more likely to face larger gender wage gaps than whites, and blacks and Latinos face significant wage and wealth gaps when compared to white workers and families.

Unionization played an important role in the creation and prosperity of the American middle class, and the decline of America’s labor movement has significantly contributed to stagnation of wages and the rise of income inequality. The further decline of labor only stands to hurt workers who are already disadvantaged.

The Romney campaign this week is basing its message off of former President Reagan’s “are you better off?” question from his 1980 campaign, even though Romney himself admitted in an interview earlier this year that “of course [the economy is] getting better” under President Obama. And the numbers don’t lie.

While the economy is only recovering slowly, the trend lines when it comes to jobs, wealth, and the success of American business are all moving in the right direction, as these charts by the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s Christian Weller show:

See more charts here. Four years ago, the economy was gripped by financial panic, with hundreds of thousands of jobs being shed each month. Now, the economy is adding jobs (too slowly), while the government has new powers to rein in the financial sector and hopefully prevent a repeat of the 2008 crisis.

During an appearance on CNN’s Starting Point on Tuesday, Tea Party Express Chairwoman Amy Kremer refused to condemn the deficit increase that would result from Mitt Romney’s proposed tax cuts, suggesting that the group is more concerned about acting as a surrogate for the Republican candidate than promoting fiscal responsibility.

Romney would extend all of the Bush tax cuts, reduce all individual income tax rates by an additional 20 percent, lower the corporate rate from the current 35 percent to 25 percent, eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax, the estate tax, Obamacare’s Medicare taxes on high-income individuals, and taxes on investment income for households under certain income levels. The former governor claims that he could recoup the lost revenue by closing unspecified “tax expenditures,” though economists predict that he would have to dramatically slash spending to pay for his tax cuts or add trillions to the national deficit.

But Kremer, one of the Tea Party’s most prominent advocates for lowering the debt, seemed unconcerned about Romney’s plan and characterized any discussion of how his $5 trillion in tax cuts would increase the deficit as “class warfare”:

MICHAEL NUTTER (MAYOR OF PHILADELPHIA): Let’s talk about the $5 trillion that Mr. Romney is going to add on to the debt by giving tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires. You must be against that.

KREMER: I think that — I mean, at the end of the day, it’s this class warfare that the administration and the left wants to play. It’s pitting the rich against the middle class. [...]

NUTTER: Mr. Romney says he wants to give tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires, which will cost $5 trillion in debt. You must be against that, right? Because you’re against spending and you’re against debt?

KREMER: I am against spending and I’m against increasing our debt and our deficit. And this president ran and he said he would cut our deficit in half by the first term. and if not, it would be a one-term proposition. And he hasn’t done that.

Watch it:

The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates Romney’s plan “would reduce revenue by $480 billion below current policy in 2015, or $4.9 trillion over 10 years.”

The Romney campaign this week is reprising former President Reagan’s “are you better off?” question, in an attempt to paint President Obama as a failure when it comes to the economy. “He can’t tell you that you’re better off,” said Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan. “Simply put, the Jimmy Carter years look like the good old days compared to where we are now.” Romney introduced the theme during his speech before the Republican National Convention, saying, “every president since the Great Depression who came before the American people asking for a second term could look back at the last four years and say with satisfaction: ‘you are better off today than you were four years ago.’ Except Jimmy Carter. And except this president.”

“Saying that things are better off is an insult,” added Romney campaign adviser Eric Fehrnstrom. But if it’s an insult to say that the economy is better off, then Mitt Romney has been slinging some insults of his own, considering how he answered a question from conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham back in January:

INGRAHAM: You’ve also noted that there are signs of improvement on the horizon in the economy. How do you answer the president’s argument that the economy is getting better in a general election campaign if you yourself are saying it’s getting better?

ROMNEY: Well, of course it’s getting better. The economy always gets better after a recession, there is always a recovery. […]

INGRAHAM: Isn’t it a hard argument to make if you’re saying, like, OK, he inherited this recession, he took a bunch of steps to try to turn the economy around, and now, we’re seeing more jobs, but vote against him anyway? Isn’t that a hard argument to make? Is that a stark enough contrast?

ROMNEY: Have you got a better one, Laura? It just happens to be the truth.

When President Obama took office, the economy was shedding 800,000 jobs per month and contracting at a rate of 8.9 percent. As Time’s Michael Grunwald noted, at that pace, “we would have shed the entire Canadian economy in 2009.” Literally four years ago, in September 2008, the U.S. was gripped by financial panic. Investment banks were failing, mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were placed into conservatorship, and the groundwork was being laid for the Bush administration’s $700 billion bailout of the financial system.

Now, a slow recovery has taken hold, which is undoubtedly an improvement. And not that long ago, Romney himself was willing to concede as much.