In 2024, there were around 14.26 million workers who were members of labor unions in the United States. This follows a general decline in union membership and was a decrease from 2023, when there were roughly 14.42 billion union members in the United States.

Union membership has been declining since 1983, and reached a historic low in 2024. There was a slight rise in 2020, but this has been attributed to union members being less likely to lose their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2024, the rate of union membership declined again to 9.9 percent. Despite this constant decline, the number of workers represented by a union increased in 2023.

In 2024, Hawaii had the highest rate of union membership among its working population, with 26.5 percent being a union member. The least unionized state was South Dakota, with a rate of 2.7 percent.

The trade union membership statistics 2023 are Official Statistics in Development that use the Labour Force Survey to provide an estimate of the levels and density of trade union membership for all UK workers. It also covers union presence and collective bargaining.

Estimates are presented by:

• gender
• sector
• age
• industry
• region
• occupation

The share of workers in the United States who are members of labor unions has been on the decline since 1983. While rates of union membership have gotten closer between men and women, the rate of male union membership has declined more drastically than that of women. In 2024, **** percent of working men were union members compared to *** percent of women.

This study utilizes time-series data from 1897-2005 to explore the positive and negative effects of rivalry between labor unions. Utilizing econometric factors, it also investigates how competition from rival union federations and independent unions affects union density. Variables include counts of pro-labor and pro-management unfair labor practice cases adjudicated by the National Labor Relations Board, competitor union membership ratio and number ratio, the annual percentage change in union density, and the percentage change in the density of AFL/AFL-CIO membership. Other variables include the percentage of United States House members who belong to the Democratic Party, the percentage of popular votes in presidential elections that favored Socialist or Communist parties, core employment and unemployment, the consumer price index (CPI), and the labor union historical periods: Western Labor Union (WLU), Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Trade Union Unity League (TUUL), Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), and Change to Win (CTW).

The rate of employees represented by unions has been declining since 1983, and reached a historic low in 2023 with 11.2 percent of employees represented. Employees represented by unions are not necessarily union members themselves, rather, their jobs are covered by a union or an employee association contract. The rate of union membership can be found here.

Number of employees by union status, North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) and gender.

Labor unions, or trade unions as they are known in Europe, are organizations formed by workers in order to represent their collective interests, particularly in relation to wages and working conditions. Historically, labor unions emerged during the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century to represent the interests of industrial workers, who flocked to work in factories, mines, and other growing manufacturing enterprises. In most high-income countries, labor unions reached their peak during the post-WWII period, when governments mediated between the interests of labor unions and the owners of capital. With the economic crises of the 1970s, however, the labor movement suffered historic defeats in Europe and North America, with union density declining rapidly in many countries due to a host of pro-market and anti-union policies which have come to be referred to as 'neoliberalism'. Labor unions today In the twenty-first century, labor unions have retreated from their key role in national economic decisions in many countries, as globalization has lowered barriers to movement of labor, enabled 'off-shoring' jobs to lower wage countries, and promoted the lowering of labor standards in order to pursue cost competitiveness. In spite of this trend, certain regions still showcase high levels of union density and retain their traditions of unions being involved in determining economic policy. Notably, the Nordic countries make up five of the top six most unionized countries, with Iceland in first place being followed by Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and then Norway.

Other notable trends among the top placed countries are states which have had a historical relationship with communism (often a key driver of the labor movement), such as Cuba, Vietnam, China, and Kazakhstan. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, labor unions and the wider labor movement has become more prominent, as workers have sought to fight for health & safety conditions in the workplace, as well as to combat high inflation related to the pandemic.

Scholars and political observers point to declining labor unions on the one hand, and rising white identity politics on the other, as profound changes in American politics. However, there has been little attention to the potential feedback between these forces. In this article, we investigate the role of union membership in shaping white racial attitudes. We draw upon research in history and American political development to generate a theory of interracial labor politics, in which union membership reduces racial resentment. Cross-sectional analyses consistently show that white union members have lower racial resentment and greater support for policies that benefit African Americans. More importantly, our panel analysis suggests that gaining union membership between 2010 and 2016 reduced racial resentment among white workers. The findings highlight the important role of labor unions in mass politics, and, more broadly, the importance of organizational membership for political attitudes and behavior.

American poverty research largely neglects labor unions. The authors use individual-level panel data, incorporate both household union membership and state-level union density, and analyze both working poverty and working-aged poverty (among households led by 18- to 64-year-olds). They estimate three-way fixed effects (person, year, and state) and fixed-effects individual slopes models on the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), 1976–2015. They exploit the higher quality income data in the Cross-National Equivalent File—an extension of the PSID—to measure relative (50% of median in current year) and anchored (50% of median in 1976) poverty. Both union membership and state union density have statistically and substantively significant negative relationships with relative and anchored working and working-aged poverty. Household union membership and state union density significantly negatively interact, augmenting the poverty-reducing effects of each. Higher state union density spills over to reduce poverty among non-union households, and there is no evidence that higher state union density worsens poverty for non-union households or undermines employment.

In 2023, union members accounted for 4.3 percent of wage and salary workers in Virginia, compared with 3.7 percent in 2022,the union membership rate for the state was at its peak in 1992, when it averaged 9.3 percent, and at its low point in 2007 and 2022 at 3.7 percent.Nationwide, union members accounted for 10.0 percent of employed wage and salary workers in 2023. The rate was little changed from the previous year. Since 1989, when comparable state data became available, union membership rates in Virginia have been below the U.S. average union membership by at least 5 percentage points. Virginia had 176,000 union members in 2023. In addition to these members, another 50,000 wage and salary workers in Virginia were represented by a union on their main job or covered by an employee association or contract while not union members themselves.

This table contains 99 series, with data for years 1976 - 1995 (not all combinations necessarily have data for all years). This table contains data described by the following dimensions (Not all combinations are available): Geography (11 items: Canada; Newfoundland and Labrador; Prince Edward Island; Nova Scotia ...), Sex (3 items: Both sexes; Males; Females ...), Components (3 items: Unionized workers; Employees; Union density ...).

Amid growing evidence of “unequal democracy” in the United States, labor unions can play a potentially important role by ensuring that low income citizens’ opinions receive more equal consideration when elected officials make policy decisions. To investigate this possibility, I evaluate the relationship between labor union strength and representational equality across the states and find evidence that states with higher levels of union membership weigh citizens’ opinions more equally in the policymaking process. In contrast, there is no relationship between the volume of labor union contributions to political campaigns in a state and the equality of political representation. These findings suggest that labor unions promote greater political equality primarily by mobilizing their working class members to political action and, more broadly, underscore the important role organized labor continues to play in shaping the distribution of political power across American society.

Graph and download economic data for Employment Cost Index: Wages and salaries for Private industry workers in All union workers (CIU2020000000510I) from Q1 2001 to Q1 2025 about ECI, salaries, workers, private industries, wages, private, industry, and USA.

While union membership has been on the decline nationwide since 2000, the agricultural industry has seen a recent increase. The industry has had low rates of union membership compared with averages across all industries. In 2000, around nine percent of workers were members of unions compared to 2.6 percent of agricultural workers. However, in 2024 only six percent of U.S. workers were union members compared with 1.2 percent of agricultural workers.

Labor union members are more likely to vote than their non-unionized counterparts, and when they do vote, are more likely to support the Democratic Party. However, a sizable minority of union members vote Republican. This is puzzling, given that the national Republican Party has long been hostile toward organized labor. Extant research has clearly demonstrated that union and non-union members differ in their voting behavior, but we know little about such variation among union members. I explore this latter phenomenon here, arguing that the frequency of workplace political discussion plays an important role in shaping how labor union members vote. I test this with data from the 2004 National Annenberg Election Survey (NAES). Overall, I find that workplace discussion of politics is positively and significantly associated with the probability that labor union members vote Democrat. This appears to occur via a “learning” mechanism, in which greater workplace discussion of politics leads union members to recognize which candidate is more “pro-labor.” Overall, these findings help us to better understand the consequences of the workplace, political discussion, and the politics of American labor unions.

Labor unions, also known as trade unions, reached their peak in the advanced industrial countries of the G7 and Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD) in the late twentieth century; since the 1980s however, their memberships have declined drastically, in some countries by as much as 50 percent. The labor movement arose in the nineteenth century to represent workers' interests in collective bargaining and to protests against poor wages and work conditions. From their peak in the twentieth century, unions have declined to represent much smaller numbers of workers today, in many countries being active mainly among public sector workers, such as in the United States. The rise and fall of union power In their rise during the twentieth century, labor unions were tightly connected to political parties of social democratic or socialist bent, while also being connected with Christian democrats in some continental European countries. As these parties came to power in the post-WWII period, unions were institutionalized into a system of social partnership with employers and the government in many countries. This agreement minimized labor disputes, while focusing on increasing productivity, which led to a period of unprecedented economic growth. As this system ran up against intractable economic problems in the 1970s, however, parties came to power who pursued a 'neoliberal' agenda of liberalization of the labor market and the privatization of nationalized companies. Since the late 1970s, these policies have caused union membership to decline drastically, as unions could engage in the same level of collective bargaining in a more interconnected and globalized international economy.

While union membership has been on the decline nationwide since 2000, the mining, quarrying, and oil and natural gas industry has seen a recent increase. The industry had relatively high rates of union membership compared with averages across all industries at the start of the century. In 2000, around nine percent of workers were members of unions compared to 11.3 percent of industry workers. The rate spiked in 2022 after union membership in oil and gas reached an all-time low in 2019 and continued to increase to 6.5 in 2024.