Union Membership Declines Statewide and Nationally

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the union membership rate in Connecticut was 14% in 2012, down from 16.8% in 2011. Thirteen states had a higher union membership rate, including New York, which continued to have the highest at 23.2%. North Carolina again had the lowest (2.9%).

The number of union members in Connecticut dropped from 259,000 in 2011 to 216,000 in 2012 out of a total employed population of 1.541 million.

Nationally, union membership also declined, from 11.8% in 2011 to 11.3% 2012. The number of workers belonging to unions nationwide dropped from nearly 14.8 million in 2011 to 14.4 million in 2012.

In 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available, the union membership rate was just over 20%, and there were 17.7 million union workers.

Public-sector workers had a union membership rate of 35.9% in 2012, more than five times higher than the private-sector rate (6.6%).

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