Union Membership Continues to Fall

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the union membership rate: the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of a union: was 11.9% in 2010, down from 12.3% a year earlier. The number of workers belonging to a union declined by 612,000 to 14.7 million. In 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1% and there were 17.1 million union workers.

Other highlights from the 2010 data:

• The union membership rate for public sector workers (36.2%) was substantially higher that the rate for private sector workers (6.9%)
• Workers in education, training and library occupations had the highest unionization rate at 37.1%
• Black workers were more likely to be union members than were white, Asian or Hispanic workers
• Among states, New York has the highest union membership rate (24.2%) and North Carolina had the lowest rate (3.2%)

For complete data: www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm