Union Membership Rate At Historic Low Despite Recent Labor Victories

U.S. unions managed to add thousands of members last year amid a wave of U.S. labor activism, but their footprint shrank slightly as an overall share of the workforce.

The number of workers belonging to a union increased by 139,000 to a total of roughly 14.4 million, according to figures released Tuesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, the overall share of workers belonging to unions (what’s known as union density) dropped slightly from 10.1% to 10% — the lowest on record since the data was first released in 1983.

Union density serves as a key measure of organized labor’s overall strength in the workforce and its ability to influence wages and benefits. Even though unions managed to add to the raw number of members last year, they could not keep pace with the strong growth of non-union jobs in the economy.

Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, a federation of 60 unions, said the numbers don’t tell the whole story, noting the high-profile strikes and new organizing campaigns afoot.

“Although union density remained flat in 2023, that doesn’t reflect the surging momentum that working people have carried into this year,” Shuler said in a statement. “Waves of workers across industries and geography are joining unions despite vicious union-busting campaigns by large corporations.”

While the private sector managed to add 191,000 union members, the number of union members in the public sector dropped by 52,000.

The public sector has generally been an area of strength for organized labor in recent years, with union density five times higher than in the private sector. But, as The New York Times reported last year, state and local governments have struggled to fill jobs amid a tight labor market, which has likely