Union membership falls to 10.7 percent

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.