Union membership data can show roadmap to victory
Although overall union membership declined, a detailed look hints paths forward
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its annual report on union membership yesterday, finding that the percent of American workers that belong to a labor union declined slightly, from 10.1% in 2022 to 10.0% in 2023.
The report isn’t unusual; union density has dwindled for decades, tumbling from 23% in 1980. The factors are generally familiar, and involve both economic changes in core industries for organized labor, and structural barriers to new organizing in sectors adding jobs. To crudely summarize the trends, manufacturing jobs, once a core area of union strength, have been progressively offshored or moved to the South for decades; meanwhile, large components of the growing service sector have proven resistant to organizing, with only recent breakthroughs in major chain hospitality retailers like Starbucks.
This doesn’t represent “decline,” per se: the total numbers of union members have stayed fairly stable, and in fact, grew between 2022 and 2023. The issue is that union growth in membership has been unable to keep up with the addition of jobs in largely non-union sectors, with negative consequences for worker bargaining power within the economy. But the report may still be a surprise to those expecting different news, given 2023’s large-scale strike activity and soaring union popularity among Americans.
The discrepancy – widespread desire for unions that isn’t matched by organizing activity – is stark. As pointed out in the Economic Policy Institute’s release yesterday, nearly half of workers polled in 2017 would vote for a union if provided the opportunity to do so, but structural barriers and political attacks have eroded their ability to exercise that right. Over the past decade, some states have passed attacks or restrictions on public sector bargaining rights; changing National Labor Relations Board standards and chronic underfunding have reduced the agency’s ability to provide a stable pro-worker regulatory environment and to enforce the Act on behalf of workers. Finally, as detailed by Brian Callachi in a 2020 report on the airline industry, webs of contractors and subcontractors have created barriers for organizing in some industries, alongside weakening worker bargaining power.
Focusing on the top-level numbers, however, distracts from drawing lessons and insight from what the report tells us. A decrease in overall union density does not indicate a uniform decrease, when analyzed by various relevant measures. Looking at a three year trend broken out by state, for example, provides a more nuanced picture.
Over the past three years, union density has had net growth in Arkansas, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawai’i, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia. Vermont and Hawai’i are of particular note; both have seen significant union growth, and Hawai’i (the most union dense state in the United States) is the only state to boast higher union density today than in the 1960s.
Some speculative potential factors are immediately discernible; Kentucky and Oklahoma were both epicenters of the “Red for Ed” movement and saw statewide education strikes. In Virginia, passage of a public sector collective bargaining law has led to widespread union organizing in school districts and municipalities. Montana successfully fought off a right-to-work proposal by a Republican-controlled state government, demonstrating labor’s continued political strength in a historically pro-union state. Finally, the Vermont AFL-CIO has placed a premium on supporting new worker organizing in a heavily progressive state represented by Sen. Bernie Sanders. By providing a state-by-state breakdown, more detailed analysis of the factors impacting union decline and growth is possible.
Another relevant factor – sector – also helps us better understand the changing shape of the labor movement.
Changes in density in 2022 and 2023 reveal few consistent trends. Management, professional, and related occupations experienced consistent decline, as did professional and related occupations, and education, training, and library occupations. Losses in education, training, and library occupations – which is heavily organized, particularly within education – could be attributed to on-going school staffing struggles, alongside the long-term impact of Janus v. AFSCME. Likewise, many sectors within this category are heavily or solely reliant on public funding, potentially leading to declines even as private sector profits grow.
Some, however, experienced consistent growth – and notably, there was consistent growth in sectors that experienced significant strike activity or threats of strike activity over the past few years. Production membership, which saw large-scale strikes across a range of subsectors, saw two consecutive years of density growth alongside a total growth in the number of production jobs. Transportation and material moving – which saw extensive organizing in preparation for UPS bargaining – likewise experienced two consecutive years of growth, as did the sector including the entertainment industry, which experienced unprecedented strike activity and threats of strike activity in 2022 and 2023.
Drawing more extensive conclusions requires more detailed analysis, including trend analysis including more years, and would be best interpreted as an indicator of where to look more closely for potential lessons. Changes in union membership aren’t always the deliberate outcome of politics, public policy explicitly designed to support or oppose unions, or union activity: declines and increases can be attributed to a variety of factors. A heavily unionized manufacturer closing a facility, for example, eliminates union jobs; budget cuts in a densely organized public sector likewise would reduce membership, as would staffing shortages. Conversely, a manufacturer adding a production line under a union master agreement would add jobs.
In short, positive changes in union membership are not reducible to “new organizing,” nor are losses in union membership reducible to decertifications or union members leaving unions. They’re multicausal in a manner that can’t be captured by looking at overall national trends, which superficially suggest a narrative of “decline.”
A next step would be to look at where unions are consistently growing, and figure out why. Hawai’i is a largely ignored but consistent story of union success; it’s the only state where organized labor has consistently grown even as the rest of the movement diminished in strength. There are contextual reasons – such as the historically key leadership role of radical unions like the International Longshore and Warehouse Union – that may prove worth further examination. Additionally, examination of consistent growth in states with long union histories amidst present unfavorable political climates, such as Montana and Kentucky, may reveal valuable lessons.
The top-line numbers aren’t good, even if characterizing them as “decline” is too easy. Based upon overall trends, it is possible – even highly likely – that the report issued in January of 2025 will show the first decline to single digit union membership since before the New Deal. Overall worker bargaining power in the economy has been diminishing for decades, with devastating consequences for inequality and, by extension, the health of our democratic system: a system which increasingly appears to be on life support.
Reversing those trends, however, requires that we try to fully understand what’s happening, and look to where we’re winning for clues on what the path forward looks like – alongside heavily investing in new organizing. Unless we look to where we’re winning, and invest our resources and time in proven paths to worker victory, we can expect to reach a grim milestone in a year’s time.