The State of U.S. Unions

(This article appeared in the January/February 2010 issue of The American Postal Worker magazine.)

Joyce B. Robinson, Research & Education Department Director

At the end of 2008, union members accounted for 12.4 percent of employed wage-and-salary workers, according to the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number of workers belonging to unions rose by 428,000 to 16.1 million; which was a .3 percent increase over 2007.

In 1983, the first year for which comparable data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent, and there were 17.7 million union workers. Among fulltime workers, union members had median weekly earnings of $886, while non-members earnings were $691.

The information on union membership was collected as part of the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly survey of U.S. residents over age 16 in approximately 60,000 households. Here are some other statistics:

• Government workers are nearly five times more likely to belong to a union than private-sector employees; the union membership rate for public sector workers is 36.8 percent; in private industry, the unionization rate is 7.6 percent. 
   
• Among government workers, local government employees have the highest union membership rate, 42.2 percent. 
   
• Workers in education, training, and library occupations have a high unionization rate, 38.7 percent; 
   
• New York is the state with the highest rate of union membership (24.9 percent). 
   
• North Carolina has the lowest rate of union membership (3.5 percent). 
   
• The APWU boasts nearly 80 percent membership among eligible workers at the Postal Service.

Some Demographics

The union membership rate is higher for men (13.4 percent) than for women (11.4 percent). The rate among African-American is 14.5 percent; among whites it is 12.2 percent; for Asian-Americans it is 10.6 percent, and for Hispanics union membership is 10.6 percent.

Union membership is highest among workers 55 to 64 years old (16.6 percent) and 45 to 54 years old (16 percent). The lowest union membership rates are seen among ages 16 to 24 (5 percent). Full-time workers are approximately twice as likely as part-time workers to be union members (13.7 percent, compared with 6.7 percent).

Based on residency, 29 states and the District of Columbia show union membership rates below the 12.4 percent U.S. average. In 2008, the union-membership rate rose in 26 states (and in D.C.), and declined or was relatively unchanged in each of the others.

The states with membership rates above the national average are in the Northeast and Middle Atlantic, the North Central, and Pacific regions: The largest concentration of union members can be found in the nation’s most populous states, California (2.7 million) and New York (2 million).

About half (8 million) of the nation’s 16 million union members are in those two states and Illinois (900,000), Pennsylvania (800,000), Michigan (800,000), and Ohio (700,000). Although they account for half of union membership, these six states account for only one-third of wage-and-salary employment nationwide.

The states with the highest rate of union membership are New York (24.9 percent), Hawaii (24.3 percent), and Alaska (23.5 percent). The lowest rates are seen in North Carolina (3.5 percent), Georgia (3.7 percent), South Carolina (3.9 percent), Virginia (4.1 percent), Texas (4.5 percent), and Louisiana (4.6 percent).

Texas, with 449,000 union members, had less than one-quarter the number of union members as New York, despite having 1.8 million more wage-and-salary employees.

Similarly, North Carolina and Hawaii have a comparable number of union members (132,000 and 136,000, respectively), though North Carolina has 3.8 million workers — almost seven times that of Hawaii, with 562,000 workers.