Union Members Summary
Technical information: (202) 691-6378 USDL 07-0113
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For release: 10:00 A.M. EST
Media contact: 691-5902 Thursday, January 25, 2007
UNION MEMBERS IN 2006
In 2006, 12.0 percent of employed wage and salary workers were union
members, down from 12.5 percent a year earlier, the U.S. Department of
Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The number of persons
belonging to a union fell by 326,000 in 2006 to 15.4 million. The union
membership rate has steadily declined from 20.1 percent in 1983, the first
year for which comparable union data are available. Some highlights from
the 2006 data are:
--Workers in the public sector had a union membership rate nearly
five times that of private sector employees.
--Education, training, and library occupations had the highest
unionization rate among all occupations, at 37 percent.
--The unionization rate was higher for men than for women.
--Black workers were more likely to be union members than were white,
Asian, or Hispanic workers.
Membership by Industry and Occupation
The union membership rate for government workers (36.2 percent) was
substantially higher than for private industry workers (7.4 percent).
Within the public sector, local government workers had the highest union
membership rate, 41.9 percent. This group includes several heavily union-
ized occupations, such as teachers, police officers, and fire fighters.
Among major private industries, transportation and utilities had the
highest union membership rate, at 23.2 percent, followed by construction
(13.0 percent). Within the information industry, telecommunications had
a 20.7 percent union membership rate. Financial activities had the lowest
unionization rate in 2006--1.9 percent. (See table 3.)
Among occupational groups, education, training, and library occupations
(37.3 percent) and protective service occupations (34.7 percent) had the
highest unionization rates in 2006. Transportation and material moving
occupations (18.5 percent), construction and extraction occupations (17.6
percent), installation, maintenance, and repair occupations (15.8 percent),
community and social services occupations (15.6 percent), and production
occupations (15.5 percent) also had higher-than-average rates. Sales and
related occupations (3.1 percent) and farming, fishing, and forestry occu-
pations (3.5 percent) had the lowest unionization rates. (See table 3.)
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Demographic Characteristics of Union Members
In 2006, the union membership rate was higher for men (13.0 percent)
than for women (10.9 percent). (See table 1.) The gap between their rates
has narrowed considerably since 1983, when the rate for men was about 10 per-
centage points higher than the rate for women. This narrowing occurred be-
cause the union membership rate for men declined more rapidly than the rate
for women over the period.
Black workers were more likely to be union members (14.5 percent) than
were whites (11.7 percent), Asians (10.4 percent), or Hispanics (9.8 per-
cent). Among age groups, union membership rates were highest among workers
45 to 64 years old (16.0 percent) and were lowest among those ages 16 to 24
(4.4 percent). Full-time workers were more than twice as likely as part-
time workers to be union members, 13.1 and 6.3 percent, respectively. (See
table 1.)
Union Representation of Nonmembers
About 1.5 million wage and salary workers were represented by a union
on their main job in 2006, while not being union members themselves. (See
table 1.) Slightly more than half of these workers were employed in govern-
ment. (See table 3.)
Earnings
In 2006, full-time wage and salary workers who were union members had
median usual weekly earnings of $833, compared with a median of $642 for
wage and salary workers who were not represented by unions. (See table 2.)
The difference reflects a variety of influences in addition to coverage by
a collective bargaining agreement, including variations in the distributions
of union members and nonunion employees by occupation, industry, firm size,
or geographic region. (For a discussion of the problem of differentiating
between the influence of unionization status and the influence of other
worker characteristics on employee earnings, see "Measuring union-nonunion
earnings differences," Monthly Labor Review, June 1990.)
Union Membership by State
In 2006, 29 states and the District of Columbia had union membership
rates below that of the U.S. average, 12.0 percent, while 20 states had
higher rates and 1 state posted the same rate. All states in the East
North Central, Middle Atlantic, and Pacific divisions reported union
membership rates at or above the national average, and all states in the
East South Central and West South Central divisions had rates below it.
Union membership rates were down in 30 states and the District of Columbia,
up in 17 states, and unchanged in 3 states from 2005. (See table 5.)
Among the five states reporting union membership rates below 5.0 percent
in 2006, North Carolina and South Carolina continued to post the lowest
rates (3.3 percent each). The next lowest rates were recorded in Virginia
(4.0 percent), Georgia (4.4 percent), and Texas (4.9 percent). Four states
had union membership rates over 20.0 percent in 2006--Hawaii (24.7 percent),
New York (24.4 percent), Alaska (22.2 percent), and New Jersey (20.1 percent).
Hawaii and New York have recorded the highest union membership rates among all
states for 10 of the past 11 years.
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The largest numbers of union members lived in California (2.3 million)
and New York (2.0 million). Just under half (7.5 million) of the 15.4
million union members in the U.S. lived in six states (California, 2.3
million; New York, 2.0 million; Illinois, 0.9 million; Michigan, 0.8
million; New Jersey, 0.8 million; and Pennsylvania, 0.7 million), though
these states accounted for about one-third of wage and salary employment
nationally.
State union membership levels depend on both the employment level and
union membership rate. Texas (with the second largest number of employed
wage and salary workers) had less than one-quarter as many union members as
New York (the third largest), despite having over 1.6 million more wage and
salary employees. Similarly, Florida (with the fourth largest employment
level) and Minnesota (the twenty-first) had virtually the same number of
union members, even though Florida’s wage and salary employment level was
three times that of Minnesota.
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