BLS: Union Membership in 2022 Was 'Lowest On Record'
Private-sector union membership falls to 6 percent, an all time low, according to the Bureau of Labor Statisics.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its annual Union Members Summary on Thursday.
Despite unions gaining an additional 273,000 members in 2022, union membership fell as a percentage of the U.S. workforce to 10.1 percent, down from 10.3 percent in 2021.
“However, the total number of wage and salary workers grew by 5.3 million (mostly among nonunion workers), or 3.9 percent,” the BLS stated. “This disproportionately large increase in the number of total wage and salary employment compared with the increase in the number of union members led to a decrease in the union membership rate.”
Among the states, Hawaii had the highest percentage of union membership, while South Carolina had the lowest percentage (for all state rankings, see below)
The union membership rate of public-sector workers continued to be more than five times higher than the rate of private-sector workers, according to BLS.
In the public sector, 33.1 percent of government workers are unionized, compared to only 6.0 in the private sector (down from 6.1 percent in 2021).
"In 2022, 7.1 million employees in the public sector belonged to unions, about the same as in the private sector (7.2 million),” the BLS stated.
The union membership rate “continued to be highest in local government (38.8 percent), which employs many workers in heavily unionized occupations, such as police officers, firefighters, and teachers.”
Takeaways:
Despite the upsurge in union organizing activity in 2022, the amount of job growth surpassed union growth as employer hiring increased dramatically from 2021, when much of the nation was still affected from the pandemic lockdowns.
Despite high profile campaigns, like those at Amazon, Apple, Chipotle, Starbucks, Trader Joe’s and others, while the amount union members grew by 273,000, the actual number paled in comparison to the 5.3 million jobs that were added in 2022, noted the Washington Post.
States with the highest union membership are Hawaii and New York (21.9 percent and 20.7 percent, respectively)
States with the lowest union membership are South Carolina and North Carolina (1.7 percent and 2.8 percent, respectively)
Despite the shift toward more ‘Gen Z’ workers organizing in 2022, a higher percentage of older workers (45 to 54) were in unions at 12.6 percent versus younger employees (16 to 24) at 4.4 percent.
More men are in unions (10.5 percent) than women (9.6 percent).
When broken into major race and ethnicity groups, Black workers continued to have a higher union membership rate in 2022 (11.6 percent) than White workers (10.0 percent), Asian workers (8.3 percent), and Hispanic workers (8.8 percent).
