Union membership has remained stagnant in 2017, according to a January 19 report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Unions remained at 10.7%, adding only 262,000 members over 2016. In contrast, union participation rates were 20.1% in 1983, when union data was first compiled. Data was collected from a Current Population Survey of 60,000 eligible households.
New York state had the highest rate of union participation at 23.8% and South Carolina had the lowest at 2.6%. Union member rates for public-sector employees (34.4%) remained five times that of private-sector employees (6.5%) and, as in previous years, men were more likely to be union members than women (11.4% vs 10%).
Read the full BLS press release, including additional related statistics, here.
