Technical information: (202) 691-6378 USDL 09-0095
http://www.bls.gov/cps/
For release: 10:00 A.M. (EST)
Media contact: (202) 691-5902 Wednesday, January 28, 2009
UNION MEMBERS IN 2008
In 2008, union members accounted for 12.4 percent of employed wage
and salary workers, up from 12.1 percent a year earlier, the U.S.
Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The
number of workers belonging to a union rose by 428,000 to 16.1 million.
In 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available,
the union membership rate was 20.1 percent, and there were 17.7 million
union workers.
The data on union membership were collected as part of the Current
Population Survey (CPS). The CPS is a monthly survey of about 60,000
households that obtains information on employment and unemployment
among the nation's civilian noninstitutional population age 16 and
over.
Some highlights from the 2008 data are:
--Government workers were nearly five times more likely to belong
to a union than were private sector employees.
--Workers in education, training, and library occupations had the
highest unionization rate at 38.7 percent.
--Black workers were more likely to be union members than were
white, Asian, or Hispanic workers.
--Among states, New York had the highest union membership rate
(24.9 percent) and North Carolina had the lowest rate (3.5 percent).
Membership by Industry and Occupation
The union membership rate for public sector workers (36.8 percent)
was substantially higher than the rate for private industry workers
(7.6 percent). Within the public sector, local government workers had
the highest union membership rate, 42.2 percent. This group includes
many workers in several heavily unionized occupations, such as teachers,
police officers, and fire fighters. Private sector industries with
high unionization rates include transportation and utilities (22.2 per-
cent), telecommunications (19.3 percent), and construction (15.6 per-
cent). In 2008, unionization rates were relatively low in financial
activities (1.8 percent) and professional and business services (2.1
percent). (See table 3.)
Among occupational groups, education, training, and library occupa-
tions (38.7 percent) and protective service occupations (35.4 percent)
had the highest unionization rates in 2008. Sales and related occu-
pations (3.3 percent) and farming, fishing, and forestry occupations
(4.3 percent) had the lowest unionization rates. (See table 3.)
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Demographic Characteristics of Union Members
The union membership rate was higher for men (13.4 percent) than
for women (11.4 percent) in 2008. (See table 1.) 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.
Between 1983 and 2008, the union membership rate for men declined
by 11.3 percentage points, while the rate for women declined by 3.2
percentage points.
In 2008, black workers were more likely to be union members (14.5
percent) than workers who were white (12.2 percent), Asian (10.6
percent), or Hispanic (10.6 percent). Black men had the highest
union membership rate (15.9 percent), while Asian men had the lowest
rate (9.6 percent).
By age, union membership rates were highest among workers 55 to 64
years old (16.6 percent) and 45 to 54 years old (16.0 percent). The
lowest union membership rates occurred among those ages 16 to 24 (5.0
percent). Full-time workers were about twice as likely as part-time
workers to be union members, 13.7 compared with 6.7 percent. (See
table 1.)
Union Representation of Nonmembers
About 1.7 million wage and salary workers were represented by a
union on their main job in 2008, while not being union members them-
selves. (See table 1.) About half of these workers were employed
in government. (See table 3.)
Earnings
In 2008, among full-time wage and salary workers, union members had
median usual weekly earnings of $886 while those who were not repre-
sented by unions had median weekly earnings of $691. (See table 2.)
The difference reflects a variety of influences in addition to cover-
age by a collective bargaining agreement, including variations in
the distributions of union members and nonunion employees by occupa-
tion, industry, firm size, or geographic region. (For a discussion
of the problem of differentiating between the influence of unioniza-
tion status and the influence of other worker characteristics on em-
ployee earnings, see "Measuring union-nonunion earnings differences,
" Monthly Labor Review, June 1990.)
Union Membership by State
In 2008, 29 states and the District of Columbia had union member-
ship rates below that of the U.S. average, 12.4 percent, while 20
states had higher rates, and 1 state had 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 rose over the year in 26
states and the District of Columbia, declined in 20 states, and were
unchanged in 4 states. (See table 5.)
Six states had union membership rates below 5.0 percent in 2008,
with North Carolina having the lowest rate (3.5 percent). The next
lowest rates were recorded in Georgia (3.7 percent), South Carolina
(3.9 percent), Virginia (4.1 percent), Texas (4.5 percent), and Lou-
isiana (4.6 percent). Three states had union membership rates over
20.0 percent in 2008--New York (24.9 percent), Hawaii (24.3 percent),
and Alaska (23.5 percent).
- 3 -
The largest numbers of union members lived in California (2.7 mil-
lion) and New York (2.0 million). About half (8.0 million) of the
16.1 million union members in the U.S. lived in just 6 states (Cali-
fornia, 2.7 million; New York, 2.0 million; Illinois, 0.9 million;
Pennsylvania, 0.8 million; Michigan, 0.8 million; and Ohio, 0.7 mil-
lion), though these states accounted for only one-third of wage and
salary employment nationally.
State union membership levels depend on both the employment level
and union membership rate. Texas, with 449,000 union members in 2008,
had less than one-quarter as many union members as New York, despite
having over 1.8 million more wage and salary employees. Similarly,
North Carolina and Hawaii had a comparable number of union members
(132,000 and 136,000, respectively), though North Carolina's wage and
salary employment level, at 3.8 million, was almost seven times that
of Hawaii at 562,000.
