The labor movement's strong organizing efforts are reaching thousands of new workers eager for the benefits and protections of union membership, according to new data released Jan. 25 by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

The agency's annual report on union membership shows that unions added 311,000 members nationally in 2007, increasing the total number of union members to 15.7 million. That was the largest single-year increase since 1979. Union members now account for 12.1 percent of employed wage and salary workers, up from 12.0 percent in 2006. Last year's BLS report showed that union membership had declined from 12.5 percent in 2005 to 12.0 percent in 2006, so this year's increase signals a positive trend in union growth.

AFL-CIO president John Sweeney said the latest figures show that "working people are pushing to form and join unions in order to improve their lives, despite record levels of resistance from employers. They know that a union card is the single best ticket into the middle class, especially in today’s economy." The AFL-CIO story on the report is available here.

The BLS report confirms the long-established fact that union membership brings significant economic advantages. In 2007, among full-time wage and salary workers, union members had median weekly earnings of $863, compared with non-union employees who had median weekly earnings of $663. Other BLS reports have shown that union members also are more likely to have health benefits and defined-benefit pensions.

A breakdown of the report reveals some interesting trends:

• The union membership rate for public-sector workers (35.9 percent) is substantially higher than for private industry (7.5 percent). Within the public sector, local government workers (a group that includes teachers) have the highest union membership rate (41.8 percent).

• Among occupational groups, education, training and library occupations (37.2 percent) and protective service occupations (35.2 percent) have the highest unionization rates.

• African-Americans are more likely to be union members (14.3 percent) than whites (11.8 percent), Asians (10.9 percent) and Hispanics (9.8 percent).

• The four states with the highest union density are New York (25.2 percent), Alaska (23.8 percent), Hawaii (23.4 percent) and Washington (20.2 percent). 

January 25, 2008