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In 2013, the union membership rate—the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of unions—was 11.3 percent, the same as in 2012, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The number of wage and salary workers belonging to unions, at 14.5 million, was little different from 2012.In 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent, and there were 17.7 million union workers.
The data on union membership were collected as part of the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly sample survey of about 60,000 households that obtains information on employment and unemployment among the nation’s civilian noninstitutional population age 16 and over
Highlights from the 2013 data:
- Public-sector workers had a union membership rate (35.3 percent) more than five times higher than that of private-sector workers (6.7 percent).
- Workers in education, training, and library occupations and in protective service occupations had the highest unionization rate, at 35.3 percent for each occupation group.
- Men had a higher union membership rate (11.9 percent) than women (10.5 percent).
- Among major race and ethnicity groups, black workers had a higher union membership rate in 2013 (13.6 percent) than workers who were white (11.0 percent), Asian (9.4 percent), or Hispanic (9.4 percent).
- Among states, New York continued to have the highest union membership rate (24.4 percent), and North Carolina had the lowest rate (3.0 percent).
- By age, the union membership rate was highest among workers ages 45 to 64—14.0 percent for those ages 45 to 54 and 14.3 percent for those ages 55 to 64.
- Full-time workers were about twice as likely as part-time workers to be union members, 12.5 percent compared with 6.0 percent
- In 2013, among full-time wage and salary workers, union members had median usual weekly earnings of $950, while those who were not union members had median weekly earnings of $750.
In 2013, 16.0 million wage and salary workers were represented by a union. This group includes both union members (14.5 million) and workers who report no union affiliation but whose jobs are covered by a union contract (1.5 million). Private-sector employees comprised more than half (810,000) of the 1.5 million workers who were covered by a union contract but were not members of a union
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