The summer of strikes has extended into fall and is battering the U.S. economy with a ripple effect impacting productivity, spending and hiring at a time when many economists still fear a recession.

Strikes by the entertainment industry and the United Auto Workers have already triggered an estimated $10 billion in losses across the economy, but some analysts say those numbers underestimate the damage because it’s near impossible to measure the full impact of a work stoppage.

Strikes have far-reaching consequences that hurt everything from the nation’s total output, corporate sales, consumer spending, and employment as well as satellite businesses that depend on striking workers for sales, products and supplies.

“If you add up all these strikes, it’s enough workers and industries that you have to worry about how much product we are losing,” said Alex Salter, an economist at Texas Tech University. “All these individual strikes might be a small cut, but collectively it could be death by a thousand cuts.”

President Biden’s aggressively pro-union policies have been blamed for emboldening labor leaders and fomenting the rash of strikes across the U.S. The White House insists he’ll never back down from advocating for workers’ rights and collective bargaining.

This year has already seen the highest number of workers on strike since 1986 and it’s growing. More than 75,000 Kaiser Permanente employees walked off the job Wednesday which union representatives say is the largest strike of health care workers in U.S. history. It will impact hundreds of hospitals across several states as workers call for increased staffing levels and wage increases.

Kaiser Permanente employees joined striking members of the United Auto Workers and the Screen Actors Guild, whose walk-offs show no sign of slowing down.

Both have already taken a toll on the economy.

In less than two weeks, the UAW strike has caused nearly $4 billion in damages for the automotive industry alone, according to a report released this week.

Economic consulting firm Anderson Economic Group estimates that the UAW strike has caused $1.2 billion in direct losses for Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, the parent company of Dodge, Chrysler and Jeep. The work stoppage has also led to $325 million in direct wages lost, $1.29 billion in supplier losses and $1.2 billion in automotive car dealers and customers.

Anderson’s evaluation did not include the expansion of the UAW strike on Sept. 29 when an additional 7,000 workers joined the picket lines at a Ford plant in Chicago and a General Motors plant in Lansing, Michigan. All told, more than 25,000 autoworkers in 21 states are on strike, which accounts for about 17% of the UAW’s 150,000 members.

“When the innocent bystanders begin to feel it, it will affect the generally supportive sentiment Americans have been expressing about the UAW’s demands thus far in the strike,” Anderson said in a statement accompanying its report.

A Moody’s Analytics report estimates that if the UAW strike lasts through October, the nation’s gross domestic product would likely be reduced by 0.2% in the fourth quarter. While at first blush that doesn’t seem like much, a 0.2% hit would result in the loss of $52 billion to the total U.S. economy.

Pantheon Macroeconomics, an economics research company, says the hit will be much higher. It forecasted a 1.7% hit to the fourth quarter GDP if the UAW strike continues.

Mr. Salter said the impact of the strike would harm the GDP through a loss in productivity.

August saw 4.1 million work days lost this year because of labor strikes, the most for a month since August 2000, according to data from the Labor Department. August and July combined for 6.4 million days lost from 20 work stoppages, including the Writers Guild of America, the Screen Actors Guild, workers at the University of Michigan and hotel employees in Los Angeles.

Through September, there have been 7.4 million days lost to labor strikes, compared to 636 days for the same period in 2022, according to the Labor Department.

The entertainment industry strikes, which removed more than $6 billion from the U.S. economy, were particularly devastating in terms of work time lost. In New York City, the strikes disrupted 11 major productions, which resulted in a loss of $1.3 billion and 17,000 hires in the state, according to state data.

The loss of productivity during a strike usually triggers layoffs, first in the industry before spreading to staffing cuts at restaurants, dry cleaners and other service companies.

Staffing in the motion picture and sound recording industries dropped by roughly 35,000 between May and September, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

General Motors and Ford announced Tuesday that they are laying off 500 additional workers between them, blaming the UAW strike. All told, General Motors has laid off more roughly 2,000 workers and Ford has laid off about 930 workers since the strike began.

The Big Three aren’t the only ones laying off workers. An association of Michigan auto parts suppliers said it expects the companies to fire half their workforce if the strike lingers. It also estimates that since the onset of the strike, suppliers have cut their workforce by 18%.

In Los Angeles, Creative Artists Agency, one of the industry’s top talent agencies, laid off 60 people amid the fallout from the entertainment strike and about 50 janitors who cleaned up at studios also lost their jobs.

Striking workers don’t receive paychecks while they’re not working but will receive pay from the union. UAW workers on the picket lines are receiving $500 a week from the union, which accounts for about 40% of their lost wages. That means reduced spending on consumer goods.

The UAW’s strike fund totals $835 million, enough to last three months if all of its workers joined the picket line.

However, the bigger economic impact may hit if the strikes are settled. UAW has demanded a 40% wage increase and 40 hours of pay for a 32-hour workweek.

That raises the specter of inflation, which has slowed recently after hitting 40-year highs last year. The lack of production in the auto industry could serve as a shock to the supply chain and if workers get the wage increases they desire, that could also increase car prices.

“If there is less product available, higher output costs, higher labor costs and higher wages, that is going to be passed on to the consumer through higher prices and less output,” Mr. Salter said. “We can be confident the direction of inflation is only headed one way.”

• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.