Union Members Bring Home the Bacon

Union members are bringing home a lot more bacon – about $204 more per week than their non-union counterparts.

According to a new report from the Department of Labor, the median weekly earnings of full-time workers who belong to a union were $980 per week in 2015, compared to just $776 for non-union workers. The difference is approximately $10,000 per year.

As Secretary of Labor Thomas E. Perez noted, “Strong unions empower all working people, putting upward pressure on wages and labor standards throughout the economy. After all, you don’t need a union card to have benefitted from the advent of the weekend.”

Strong unions benefit all workers. But research shows that a decline in union membership over roughly the last four decades is responsible for one-third of the growth in wage inequality among men and one-fifth of the growth in wage inequality among women,” Perez pointed out.

Other highlights of the report include:

• Union members are five times more likely to work in the public sector than the private sector. In the public sector, almost half work for local government, 41.3 percent.
• Men continue to have a slightly higher union membership rate, 11.5 percent, than women, 10.6 percent.  
• Black workers are more likely to be union members than white, Asian, or Hispanic workers.
• New York State continues to have the highest union membership rate, at 24.7 percent. South Carolina has the lowest, at 2.1 percent. 
• The percent of unionized workers did not change between 2014 and 2015, remaining at 11.1 percent.