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Union Membership of Working U.S. Americans

Union Membership of Working U.S. Americans

| January 27, 2020

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its annual Union Membership report this week.  It showed a continuation of the steep decline in union membership since 1983, the first year of the report.  In 1983, there were 17.7 million unionized workers and the membership rate was 20.1% of the U.S. workforce.  In 2019, there were 14.6 million and the membership rate was 10.3%, a reduction of almost half.  Digging deeper, the BLS numbers reveal a stark contrast:  unionization among public sector employees remains very high and stable at 33.6%, whereas unionization among private sector employees has plummeted to just a fifth of the public sector rate, at 6.2%.  The public sector employees with the very highest rates of unionization are employees of local governments and districts: police, fire, and education.  Lastly, more than half of all unionized workers in the U.S. are found in just 7 states: California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio and Washington.  Chart below from Marketwatch.com using BLS data.

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