January 23, 2015
January 23, 2015 (Union Membership Byte)
By Cherrie Bucknor and John Schmitt
The share of the US workforce that is a member of a union dipped 0.2 percentage points to 11.1 percent in 2014. The drop was on par with the average pace of decline in the union membership rate since the early 1980s, when directly comparable data first became available. The union membership rate fell 0.1 percentage points in the private sector, even though the number of private-sector union members increased by about 41,000 (or 0.6 percent). In the public sector, union membership increased 0.4 percentage points on what was essentially no change in public-sector union members (up 8,000 workers or 0.1 percent).
