Union Membership Continues to Fall in United States

Thanks to the Institute for Workplace Studies at Cornell for directing me to this Bureau of Labor Statistics news release about the depressing state of unionization in this country.

Here is some of what the release has to say:

In 2006, 12.0 percent of employed wage and salary workers were union members, down from 12.5 percent a year earlier, the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The number of persons belonging to a union fell by 326,000 in 2006 to 15.4 million. The union membership rate has steadily declined from 20.1 percent in 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available.

Not happy news for union supporters.  Other interest findings from the report include the fact that there are nearly five times more public sector union members than private sector ones and that blacks are more likely to join unions than whites, Asians, or Hispanics.

PS