Union decline

Union decline: the chart

Union membership declined in 2009

Today the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its annual Union Members Summary. It is a treasure trove of data. After two years of increasing union membership among wage and salary workers, union membership declined from 12.4% to 12.3%. In raw numbers the number of wage and salary workers belonging to unions declined by 771,000 to 15.3 million. Killer fact, there are more public sector union members (7.9 million) than private sector union members (7.4 million) despite 5 times more wage and salary jobs in the private sector. Public sector union membership rate is 37.4% private sector rate is 7.2%.

Labor fairing well in recession?

Reuters has an interesting article about how unions are weathering the economic slump. It says unions "represent" 17.8 million workers, 13.7% of the nation's workforce. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the latest figures on union "membership" at 12.4% and 16.1 Million. The quoted numbers include the estimated 1.7 million employees who do not belong to a union even though it is their representative. The Reuters piece also quotes the BLS as its source for its claim that so far in 2009, there have been only 3 strikes involving over 1000 workers as compared to 15 in 2008 and 29 in 2001. First year wage increases were at 2.5%, down from last year's 3.7% increase.

Union membership grows in 2008

The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes data on union membership annually. In 2008, for the first time since the BLS begin keeping the data, union membership increased significantly to 12.4% of the employed wage and salaried workers (it was 12.0% in 2006). Of course in Louisiana its lower (4.6 percent union membership, 5.6 represented by union). The surprising thing to me is in Mississippi its higher than Louisiana (5.3 percent union membership, 7.3 represented by union).