Union Share of U.S. Workforce Drops Again To Modern Low

Walter Olson

A few words to add to Daniel Griswold’s excellent post nearby on this news:

Six months ago I wrote in this space casting doubt on the popular notion that unions in the United States were on the brink of a great wave of organizing success. I pointed out that according to federally gathered statistics, the share of American workers belonging to unions was still trending down, not up.

Now the Bureau of Labor Statistics is out with its annual snapshot of the matter, It reports that the share of U.S. workers represented by unions has continued to fall from 10.3 to 10.1 percent, the lowest recorded since the data series began. Because the number of employed persons grew robustly in 2022, unions did see their membership numbers grow even as their share fell. The share of union representation slipped faster in the public sector than in the private; it continues to stand much higher in the former than in the latter (33.1 versus 6.0). Notwithstanding ample media attention to unions that hope to organize restaurant workers, food services and drinking places continue to have some of the lowest unionization rates in private industry, at just 1.4 percent.

Lesson: jobs in the media, nonprofit, and cultural sector — or even barista jobs at (scattered) Starbucks — do not typify jobs in the workplace generally. The former are disproportionately held by young grads with social justice‑y views, and the strong media interest in activism at them results in a far‐​from‐​representative spotlight — to some extent also functioning as a mirror. As I wrote last summer: “There’s a reason organizers report more success among staff at national environmental organizations than among, say, drywall installers, a sector employing 140,000.”