January 28, 2008 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Union membership in 2007

In 2007, union members accounted for 12.1 percent of employed wage and salary workers, essentially unchanged from 12.0 percent in 2006. In 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent.

[Chart data—TXT]

The union membership rate was higher for men (13.0 percent) than for women (11.1 percent) in 2007. The gap between their rates has narrowed considerably since 1983, when the rate for men was about 10 percentage points higher than the rate for women. The rates for both men and women declined between 1983 and 2007, but the rate for men declined much more rapidly.

Black workers were more likely to be union members (14.3 percent) than were whites (11.8 percent), Asians (10.9 percent) or Hispanics (9.8 percent).

These data on union membership are from the Current Population Survey. Unionization data are for wage and salary workers. Find out more in "Union Members in 2007," news release 08-0092.