Union Membership Falls To Historic Low

(The Hill) By Tal Axelrod 01/18/19 12:02 PM Union membership has fallen to a record low according to numbers released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The numbers show that the percent of wage and salary workers who are members of unions fell to 10.5 percent in 2018 the lowest number recorded since BLS began tracking the statistic. Some 14.7 million workers belong to unions compared to 17.7 million workers or about 20.1 percent of the workforce in 1983 the first year for which comparable union data are available. Union membership in both the public and private sectors declined with 7.2 million employees in the public sector belonging to a union compared with 7.6 million workers in the private sector. However the union membership rate of public-sector workers at 33.9 percent was more than five-times higher than that of private-sector workers 6.4 percent. Meanwhile the gap between union membership for men and women declined to about 1 percentage point 11.1 percent vs. 9.9 percent down from about 10 points in 1983. Among major race and ethnicity groups African-American workers continued to have a higher union membership rate in 2018 than white Asian or Hispanic workers. Union membership remained highest among the 45-64 age group.