Why does union membership keep declining?

It hardly qualifies as news anymore, but according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, union membership declined from 2023 to 2024, going from 10% to 9.9% of wage and salary workers. Some 32% of public employees are union members compared to only 5.9% of private sector workers, down from 6.0% in 2023.

This means 49% of all union members work for the government and, even more striking, 32% belong to the two national teachers unions. As National Review‘s Dominic Pino pointed out, national media is chock full of hopeful stories about union organizing drives and strikes — he cited 214 in 2014 — but the longtime trend line away from private sector unions has not turned around despite the considerable efforts of Democratic politicians.