BLS Data: Union Membership Fell Further In 2024
Union density in the United States is now in the single digits
By Peter List, Editor | January 28, 2025
Despite having the most “pro-union President in American history” in the White House for four years, as well as an extraordinarily union-friendly National Labor Relations Board, union membership in the United States fell again in 2024.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics annual release on union membership, overall union membership—which includes private and public-sector unions—in the U.S. fell to 9.9 percent in 2024.
The union membership rate—the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of unions—was 9.9 percent in 2024, little changed from the prior year, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The number of wage and salary workers belonging to unions, at 14.3 million, also showed little movement over the year. In 1983, the first year for which comparable data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent and there were 17.7 million union members.
Here are some of the highlights:
Private-sector union membership is now 5.9 percent, down from 6.0 percent in 2023.
Public-sector union membership is now 32.2 percent, which is also down from 32.5 percent.
The highest unionization rates were among workers in education, training, and library occupations (32.3 percent) and protective service occupations (29.6 percent).
Men continued to have a higher union membership rate (10.2 percent) than women (9.5 percent).
Black workers remained more likely to be union members than White, Asian, and Hispanic workers.
Nonunion workers had median weekly earnings that were 85 percent of earnings for workers who were union members ($1,138 versus $1,337).
However, BLS notes, the “comparisons of earnings in this news release are on a broad level and do not control for many factors that can be important in explaining earnings differences.”
The fact that, despite having the most pro-union President in history for four years, unions still lost membership density is not lost by pro-union writer Hamilton Nolan.
Writing that “Unions Squandered the Biden Years,” Mr. Nolan states:
“We are losing. Despite having our bestest most favorite friend in the White House, we are losing. If this does not wake the labor movement up, what will?”
With President Trump now occupying the White House and making moves to undo some of that which the Biden NLRB has done over the last four years, as well as numerous court cases challenging the NLRB’s constitutionality, Mr. Nolan’s point may be a valid one:
Unions have money. They don’t spend it on new organizing. Union density continues to go down. Unions get their best friend elected president. He creates a friendly atmosphere. Unions do not spend money on new organizing. Union density continues to go down.
Get the entire Bureau of Labor Statistics release here.