Americans are feeling a bit better about labor unions.

A new Gallup poll shows 52 percent of Americans believe labor unions benefit the broader U.S. economy, while 41 percent believe unions hurt the economy. The approval numbers are hardly a return to labor's heyday of popularity in the 1950s - but they're moving in the right direction.

The numbers represent a seven-point rise since 2011 and it is the most positive Americans have been about the economic effects of unions since 2006, the year prior to the Great Recession.

"Gallup," the polling company said last year, "first asked Americans about organized labor in 1936, a year after Congress legalized private-sector unions and collective bargaining. At that time, 72 percent of Americans approved of unions. Support remained high into the 1960s, but then dipped through the 1970s until it reached 55 percent in 1979. It has since varied, reaching as high as 66 percent in 1999 and as low as the 48 percent in 2009."

Union approval reached its all-time high water marks of 75 percent both in 1953 and 1957, Gallup said.

Public approval ratings for labor unions plummeted from 2006 to 2009. During that time, the U.S. experienced the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, which included the collapse and subsequent bailout of General Motors and Chrysler.

A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) suggests general wage stagnation in the U.S. may be due in part to the decline of labor unions. According to the EPI, union membership among men in the private sector dropped from 34 percent in 1979 to just 10 percent in 2013. Among women, unionization has dropped from 16 to 6 percent in the same time period.

Taking the inflation rate into consideration, real average U.S. weekly wages have only risen 0.9 percent over the past decade. "Rebuilding our system of collective bargaining is an important tool available for fueling wage growth for both low- and middle-wage workers and ending the era of persistent wage stagnation," concludes the EPI, a labor-backed think-tank.

The latest survey results are based on Gallup's annual Work and Education poll, conducted Aug. 3-7. Gallup asked Americans for the first time since 2011 to assess unions' effect on the U.S. economy, on unionized companies, and on union and nonunion workers.

Gallup found that negative opinions of labor unions is heavily weighed down by Republican respondents to the survey - only 28 percent said unions "mostly help" the U.S. economy.

"Now, Americans' opinions of unions have mostly recovered to what they were before the recession began," Gallup said. "But their approval of labor unions remains slightly below pre-recession levels, largely because Republicans have become increasingly negative toward them. This is consistent with other trends toward greater partisan divides on political opinions such as presidential job approval and attitudes on policy issues such as global warming."