US union membership rate hits all-time low despite campaigns

 Amazon JFK8 distribution center union organizer Jason Anthony speaks to media, April 1, 2022, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. The U.S. union membership rate reached an all-time low in 2022, despite high-profile unionization campaigns at Starbucks, Amazon and other companies. Union members fell to 10.1% of the overall workforce, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was down slightly from 10.3% in 2021. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez, File)

The U.S. union membership rate reached an all-time low last year despite high-profile unionization campaigns at Starbucks, Amazon, Apple and other companies.

Union members fell to 10.1% of the overall U.S. workforce, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was down slightly from 10.3% in 2021.

The number of workers belonging to a union actually increased by 1.9% to 14.3 million. But that failed to keep pace with higher overall employment rates. The number of wage- and salary-earning workers rose by 3.9%, the government said.

U.S. union membership has been falling steadily for decades. In 1983, the first year that comparable data is available, the union membership rate was 20.1%, the government said.

Public-sector workers, like police and teachers, had the highest unionization rates last year, at 33%. Just 6% of private-sector workers were unionized.

Automation, outsourcing and lower unionization rates in traditional union strongholds, like auto manufacturing, are among the reasons for the steady decline. But states have also chipped away at unions’ power. Twenty-seven states now have “right-to-work” laws, which prohibit a company and a union from signing a contract that requires workers to pay dues to the union that represents them.

Despite those laws, support for unions has been growing. In a survey published in August, Gallup found that 71% of Americans said they approve of labor unions, the highest percentage recorded since 1965.

There has been a surge in demand for union representation as the pandemic has eased. Labor shortages gave workers a rare upper hand, which they used to seek higher pay and benefits from their employers. Median weekly earnings for union workers are about 18% higher than those for nonunion workers, the government said.

The National Labor Relations Board reported a 53% increase in union representation petitions in its 2022 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30. A total of 2,510 petitions were filed with the agency, the highest number since 2016.

Dan Cornfield, a sociology professor at Vanderbilt University who studies unions, noted that while unionization rates are declining in some sectors, like telecommunications and clothing manufacturing, they’re rising in others, including hospitality, the arts and entertainment. Younger workers are largely driving those efforts, he said.

“Those actions and attitudes could portend a reversal of this long-term decline,” Cornfield said.

Workers at more than 270 U.S. Starbucks stores have voted to unionize over the last year, an effort that Starbucks opposes. Workers at REI and Chipotle followed with their own unionization campaigns.

Contract negotiations began last week at an Apple store in Maryland that voted to unionize last June. And workers at an Amazon warehouse in New York City voted to unionize last spring, although Amazon workers at a different warehouse in upstate New York later rejected unionization.

New York and Hawaii have the highest unionization rates, while North Carolina and South Carolina have the lowest, according to the government’s data. Men are slightly more likely to be union members than women. And Black workers are more likely to be union members than white, Hispanic or Asian workers.

Percentage of union workers in U.S. fell in 2022, report says

Nurses strike and hold a rally outside of Mount Sinai Hospital earlier this month in New York City. The Labor Department said on Thursday that overall union representation hit a record low.

Photo by John Angelillo/UPI |

Jan. 19 (UPI) -- The percentage of U.S. workers who are union members tumbled by 0.2% in 2022 despite the overall number of members increasing by 273,000, according to new figures by the Labor Department released Thursday.

That percentage rate in the report dropped union representation to a record low of 10.1%. That's a fall from 20.1% in 1983, representing 17.7 million workers.

In the department's Union Members Summary for 2022 found that the number of union members in 2022 grew to 14.3 million American workers, an increase of 1.9% from the year before.

The number of wage and salaried workers, though, increased 3.9% or by 5.3 million, outpacing the growth of employees represented by unions.

"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. The 2022 unionization rate," the report said.

The AFL-CIO said the tug-and-pull efforts to unionize businesses like Amazon and Starbucks is a perfect example of how corporations are pushing back on efforts to get workers represented.

"In 2022, we saw working people rising up despite often illegal opposition from companies that would rather pay union-busting firms millions than give workers a seat at the table," said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, in a statement. "The momentum of the moment we are in is clear.

"Organizing victories are happening in every industry, public and private, and every sector of our economy all across the country. The wave of organizing will continue to gather steam in 2023 and beyond despite broken labor laws that rig the system against workers."

The union membership rate of public-sector workers, which is 33.1%, continued to be more than five times higher than the rate of private-sector workers, which sits at 6.0%.