By The Numbers
Union Membership and Median Hourly Wage by State
A labor union is an organization of workers that negotiates with employers over wages and working conditions as a form of collective bargaining (negotiations between unions and firms). Unions seek to adjust the balance of power that’s been shifted towards employers by requiring them to deal with workers collectively, rather than as individuals. Labor unions, as a whole, have always been subjected to a huge span of opinion in the public eye. Supporters of unions view them as the workers’ primary line of defense against profit-maximizing firms to minimize the cost of labor (sometimes sacrificing wages, quality of life, and benefits). Critics of such labor unions view them as having a tendency to maximize any gains available in the short term, even if it means harming workers in the long run by driving firms into bankruptcy or by restricting new technologies and production methods that, in turn, would lead to further economic growth.
The union membership rate in the United States—the percentage of wage and salary workers who were members of unions—was 10.7 percent in 2016. Twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia had union membership rates below the U.S. average, while 23 states had rates above it. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics:
12.0% of U.S. male workers belong to unions; 10.5% of female workers do
11.1% of white workers, 13.4 % of black workers, and 9.8 % of Hispanic workers belong to unions
12.5% of full-time workers and 6.0% of part-time workers are union members
4.2% of workers ages 16–24 belong to unions, as do 14% of workers ages 45-54
Occupations in which relatively high percentages of workers belong to unions are the federal government (26.9% belong to a union), state government (31.3%), local government (41.7%); transportation and utilities (20.6%); natural resources, construction, and maintenance (16.3%); and production, transportation, and material moving (14.7%). Occupations that have relatively low percentages of unionized workers are agricultural workers (1.4%), financial services (1.1%), professional and business services (2.4%), leisure and hospitality (2.7%), and wholesale and retail trade (4.7%).
The data was compiled from the Occupational Employment Statistics program, the Labor Department’s only publicly released data set that reports median wages for states, and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
