Only 10.7 percent of the U.S. workforce belonged to a union in 2016, the Labor Department reported Thursday, a decline of 0.4 points from the previous year. Overall 14.6 million people were in unions, a decline of 240,000 from the previous year.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics data marked the continuation of a long-term trend of thinning union ranks. In 1983, the first year the department started tracking the number, the unionization rate was 20.1 percent, accounting for about 17.7 million workers.
Thursday’s report found that a slight majority of the unionized workers, about 7.4 million, were in the private sector. Nearly half were public-sector workers, meaning that they worked for federal, state or local government.
The professions with the highest unionization rates, both just under 35 percent, were education and protective services such as law enforcement or firefighters. New York was the state with the highest unionzation rate at 23.6 percent, while South Carolina had the lowest rate at 1.6 percent.
Lawrence Mishel, president of the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute, attributed the decline to financial strains in the private sector “and attacks on public-sector unionism” noting that union density there declined 0.8 percent, higher than the overall rate.
“The resulting erosion of collective bargaining exacerbates our decades-long problems with wage stagnation and inequality [and] hurts not only union workers but also nonunion workers,” Mishel said.
Several states in recent years, prodded by budgetary concerns, have moved to rein in public-sector unions. Right-to-work laws, which prohibit workers from being forced to join or otherwise support a union as a condition of employment, also have enjoyed a comeback, having been recently enacted in Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, West Virginia and Kentucky. The laws are associated with declines in union membership as they leave that choice up to the workers themselves.
Rick Berman, executive director of the conservative Center for Union Facts, said Thursday’s data shows that “union bosses are historical artifacts in 21st century workplaces.”
“Despite spending millions of dollars on campaigns like ‘$15 and a Union’ while receiving unprecedented help from the pro-union Obama administration, Big Labor is seeing only dark days ahead. Employees nationwide are rejecting the union agenda and the left-wing politics that come with it,” he said.
