unionization rate down, though members numbers up [note image slogans]

[June Zaccone]

You may have heard of the 'union boom.' The numbers tell a different story February 28, 2023

....

Headline writers began declaring things like, "Employees everywhere are organizing" and that the United States was seeing a "union boom." In September, the White House asserted "Organized labor appears to be having a moment."

However, the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released its union data for 2022. And their data shows that — far from a resurgence — the share of American workers in a union has continued to decline. Last year, the union membership rate fell by 0.2 percentage points to 10.1% — the lowest on record. This was the second year in a row that the union rate fell. Only one in ten American workers is now in a union, down from nearly one in three workers during the heyday of unions back in the 1950s.

To be sure, various data makes clear that the hubbub over a union resurgence last year wasn't all hype. For one, the absolute number of American workers in unions did, in fact, grow in 2022 — by approximately 200,000. It's just that the number of non-union jobs grew faster. The National Labor Relations Board saw 2,510 union representation petitions filed in fiscal year 2022 — a 53% increase over the previous year. That's hardly a game-changer, but it's something.....

--

June Zaccone
National Jobs for All Network
http://www.njfac.org