In 2024, unionized and non-unionized Asian workers had the highest median weekly earnings in the United States at 1,533 and 1,445 U.S. dollars respectively. While the wages of other unionized racial and ethnic minorities are around 200 dollars per week higher than their non-unionized counterparts, racial wage inequalities appear to persist across union membership. Unionized white workers for example, earn a median weekly income of 1,375 U.S. dollars, while unionized Black workers earn around an average of 1,130 U.S. dollars per week.

In 2024, members of trade unions in the United Kingdom earned on average *** percent more than the average worker. During the provided time period, the trade union wage premium was at its highest in 1995 when members of trade unions could expect to earn **** percent more than people who were not in a union.

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.

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 Q2 2025 about ECI, salaries, workers, private industries, wages, private, industry, and USA.

Average hourly and weekly wage rate, and median hourly and weekly wage rate by permanent and temporary employees, union coverage, gender, and age group, annual.

In 2024, members of labor unions had higher median weekly earnings across all age groups. Union members aged between 16 and 24 for example, had a median weekly wage of around *** U.S. dollars, while non-union members of the same age range had a median weekly wage of *** U.S. dollars. Non-union affiliated jobs had the lowest median earnings.

Construction union wage rates (CUWRI) by National Occupational Classification (NOC). Monthly data are available from January 1971. The table presents data for the most recent reference period and the last four periods.

The Survey of Union Membership was jointly sponsored by Labour Canada and Statistics Canada. This survey attempted to answer such questions as: 1. how many workers had their wages and other conditions of work determined by a collective agreement; 2. among those employees who were covered by collective agreements, how many were actually union members; 2. which industries and provinces were actually the most unionized; 3. did the wages and pension plans of union members and non-union workers differ significantly

In 2024, members of labor unions had higher median weekly earnings than any other classification of worker, earning around ***** U.S. dollars per week. Non-union members by comparison, had weekly median earnings of 1138 U.S. dollars in the same year.

In 2024, workers in the United Kingdom that were members of a Trade Union earned approximately ***British pounds an hour, compared with workers who were not in a union earned just over ** pounds an hour.

• administrative data • age dependency ratio • age groups • age structure • agriculture • armed force • average salary • average tenure s • average wages • births • broad economic activities • civil employment • civilian labour • collective dismissals • constant prices • current prices • death rates • dependent employment • discouraged workers • dismissals • duration of unemployment • earning-dispersion measures • earnings • employee density • employee turnover • employee union • employees • employment • employment protection legislation • employment ratio • employment status • exchange rate • finance • full-time • full-year equivalent employee • gender • gross earnings • health • incidents • independent workers • industry • Involuntary part time workers • job tenure • jobs • labour • labour force • labour force forecasts • labour market • labour market fluidity • labour market programmes • labour regulation • low pay incidence • median wages • membership • migration rates • minimum wages • national legislation • natural increase rates • pension age • population • population baseline • population estimates females • population projections • PPP • professional status • real estate • rigidness • salary earner ratio • salary earners • self-employed • services • short-time workers • standardised age groups • statistics • strict regulation • strictness of legislation • survey data • synthetic indicators • total employment • total increase rates • trade union • trade union members • transport • turnover rate • unemployment • union members • unpaid family workers • unpaid workers • vital statistics • weekly hours • working age ratio

Average weekly earnings, average hourly wage rate and average usual weekly hours by union status and type of work, last 5 years.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The Great Britain Historical Database has been assembled as part of the ongoing Great Britain Historical GIS Project. The project aims to trace the emergence of the north-south divide in Britain and to provide a synoptic view of the human geography of Britain at sub-county scales. Further information about the project is available on A Vision of Britain webpages, where users can browse the database's documentation system online. The Great Britain Historical GIS Project has also produced digitised boundary data, which can be obtained from the UK Data Service Census Support service. Further information is available at census.ukdataservice.ac.uk Main Topics: The Great Britain Historical Database is a large database of British nineteenth and twentieth-century statistics. Where practical the referencing of spatial units has been integrated, data for different dates have been assembled into single tables. The Great Britain Historical Database currently contains :Statistics from the 1861 Census and the Registrar General's reports, 1851-1861 Employment statistics from the census, 1841-1931 Demographic statistics from the census, 1841-1931 Mortality statistics from the Registrar General's reports, 1861-1920 Marriage statistics from the Registrar General's reports, 1841-1870 Trade union statistics for the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE), 1851-1918 Trade union statistics for the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners (ASCJ), 1863-1912 Official poor law statistics, 1859-1915 and 1919-1939 Wage statistics, 1845-1906 Hours of work statistics, 1900-1913 Small debt statistics from county courts, 1847-1913 and 1938 There are seven tables in this part of the Great Britain Historical Database : Ase_mr holds data for each branch of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE) taken from the Monthly Reports of the ASE from 1851 to 1912, and includes data about admissions, membership, unemployment benefit, strike pay, sickness benefit and pensions. Quarterly data from 1851 to 1872 and biannual data from 1873 to 1912. Ase_mr_95_96 holds a fuller version of the biannual data transcribed from the Monthly Reports of the ASE for 1895 and 1896, for which a special compressed format was used. Ase_admit holds annual admissions data for each branch taken from the Annual Reports of the ASE from 1853 to 1909. Ase_mem holds annual data about changes in membership for each branch taken from Annual Reports of the ASE for 1871 and 1872. Ase_fin holds summary annual data about the finances of the whole union taken from Annual Reports of the ASE from 1851 to 1918. Gaz_ase70 uniquely identifies individual ASE branches in existence between 1861 and 1871 and gives their location in 1871. Cj_mr holds biannual data for each branch of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners (ASCJ) taken from the Monthly Reports of the ASCJ from 1863 to 1912 (excluding 1870 reports), and includes data about admissions, membership, unemployment benefit, strike pay, sickness benefit and pensions. Please note: this study does not include information on named individuals and would therefore not be useful for personal family history research.

In 2023, Asian workers who were also represented by unions had the highest median weekly earnings in the United States. In general, workers who are members of, or represented by, unions had higher average earnings than non-union workers. The median weekly earnings by race and union membership in the United States since 2000 can be found here.

Labour Force Survey The Labour Force Survey provides estimates of employment and unemployment which are among the timeliest and important measures of performance of the Canadian economy. The LFS estimates are the first of the major monthly economic data series to be released. The Canadian Labour Force Survey was developed following the Second World War to satisfy a need for reliable and timely data on the labour market. Information was urgently required on the massive labour market changes involved in the transition from a war to a peace-time economy. Objective The main objective of the LFS is to divide the working-age population into three mutually exclusive classifications - employed, unemployed, and not in the labour force - and to provide descriptive and explanatory data on each of these. LFS data are used to produce the well-known unemployment rate as well as other standard labour market indicators such as the employment rate and the participation rate. The LFS also provides employment estimates by industry, occupation, public and private sector, hours worked and much more, all cross-classifiable by a variety of demographic characteristics. Estimates are produced for Canada, the provinces, the territories and a large number of sub-provincial regions. For employees, wage rates, union status, job permanency and workplace size are also produced. These data are used by different levels of government for evaluation and planning of employment programs in Canada. Regional unemployment rates are used by Employment and Social Development Canada to determine eligibility, level and duration of insurance benefits for persons living within a particular employment insurance region. The data are also used by labour market analysts, economists, consultants, planners, forecasters and academics in both the private and public sector. Collection This public use microdata file contains non-aggregated data for a wide variety of variables collected from the Labour Force Survey (LFS). It contains both personal characteristics for all individuals in the household and detailed labour force characteristics for household members 15 years of age and over. The personal characteristics include age, sex, marital status, educational attainment, and family characteristics. Detailed labour force characteristics include employment information such as class of worker, usual and actual hours of work, employee hourly and weekly wages, industry and occupation of current or most recent job, public and private sector, union status, paid or unpaid overtime hours, job permanency, hours of work lost, job tenure, and unemployment information such as duration of unemployment, methods of job search and type of job sought. Labour force characteristics are also available for students during the school year and during the summer months as well as school attendance whether full or part-time and the type of institution. LFS revisions: Labour force surveys are revised on a periodic basis. The most recent revisions took place in 2025. As of January 2025, LFS microdata and estimates have been adjusted to reflect population counts from the 2021 Census, with revisions going back to 2011. Additionally, several changes were made to key variables on the PUMFs: Survey weights (FINALWT) have been updated to use 2021 Census population control totals. Sub-provincial geography (CMA) has been updated to the 2021 Standard Geographical Classification (SGC) boundaries. All industry data (NAICS_21) was revised to use the latest standard, North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) 2022. Coding enhancements were applied to improve longitudinal consistency of detailed National Occupational Classification data (NOC_10 and NOC_43). Data were revised to use the gender of person instead of sex (GENDER).

The share of employees that were members of a trade union in the United Kingdom in 2024 was 22 percent, a slight fall on the previous year, when around 22.4 percent of employees were trade union members. This is also significantly lower than in 1995, when 32.4 percent of employees were members of a trade union. Waves of industrial action in 2022 In May 2022, the UK's largest transport union, the National Union of Rail Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) elected to go on strike that summer. The transport worker strike soon spread to other sectors, with workers across various UK industries taking industrial action in protest at their pay and conditions. This reached a peak in the fourth quarter of 2022 when approximately 1.64 million working days were lost to industrial action, with around 661,000 workers on strike in the last three months of the year. The wave of industrial action continued into 2023, with wages only just starting to catch up with inflation after several months of falling wages. Since 2023, the quarter with the most working days lost was the first quarter of 2024, when 296,000 working days were lost and there were approximately 129,000 workers on strike. Uniting the unions One of the biggest Trade Unions in the United Kingdom is Unite, with a membership of almost 1.25 million people in 2020/21. Unite was created in 2007 through the merger of Amicus and the Transport and General Workers Union, with Amicus itself being created in 2002 through the merger of the Manufacturing Science and Finance Union and the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union. The decline in union membership as well as the mergers of smaller unions has led to a decrease in the number of trade unions. Compared with 1999, there were 109 fewer unions in 2024. Of these unions, six had memberships of 250 thousand or more, and six had fewer than 100.

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.

In 2023, Hawaii had the highest rate of union members amongst its employed wage and salary workers in the United States. The state of New York followed closely behind with a rate of union membership around **** percent.

As of June 2022, ** percent of labor unions members cited better pay and benefits as a reason for joining a labor union in the United States. Another popular reason was employee representation and employee rights, at ** percent.

In 2023, unionized men had the highest median weekly earnings at 1,341 U.S. dollars. Unionized women could expect to make slightly less compared to non-union affiliated men, earning a median of 1,174 and 1,180 U.S. dollars per week respectively.