Despite the remarkable successes of the resurging labor movement in recent years, newly released data shows that union membership hit an all-time low in 2022 — demonstrating the dire need for pro-worker reforms in labor laws, advocates say.
According to a report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) published on Thursday, union membership decreased to a mere 10.1 percent of the workforce last year, the lowest rate on record since the agency began collecting comparable data in 1983. This represents a 0.2 percent decrease from 2021, and is half the rate of unionization recorded in 1983, when 20.1 percent of workers belonged to a union.
Indeed, this is a continuation of a 70-year trend that has seen union membership steadily eroding in the U.S. In the 1940s and ‘50s, union membership reached record highs in the private sector of around 35 percent. However, this proportion started declining in the ‘60s and took a deep plunge in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, when conservative lawmakers embraced anti-worker ideology and policies of severe austerity. President Ronald Reagan was particularly instrumental in this trend, implementing major attacks on workers’ rights.
This decline comes even as workers at major companies like Starbucks and Amazon fought fiercely to form unions in 2022, leading to a major growth in the number of union petitions filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in the 2022 fiscal year.
Those labor wins are reflected in the data, showing that the news isn’t all bad for labor advocates. Despite the overall decline in union membership, the number of workers belonging to unions still increased by 273,000, or 1.9 percent, reversing trends from previous years.
This suggests that the decreasing proportion of workers who are unionized is in large part due to the fact that the job market was booming in 2022, adding over 5 million jobs and adding nonunion jobs at a faster pace than union positions.
The numbers also show other encouraging trends for labor advocates. Union membership grew among Black workers, rising to 11.6 percent in 2022, while states that aren’t typically considered worker-friendly, like Alabama, Ohio and Texas, were among the states with the largest increases in the number of workers belonging to a union.
BLS’s data also reaffirmed the continued benefits of unionization for workers, with median weekly earnings for unionized workers being nearly $200 more than those of nonunion workers.
The fact that the sheer number of workers in a union increased is also a promising sign, some say — especially in a time when conservative and far right lawmakers are actively targeting workers’ rights.
“It’s tempting to look at the 10.1 percent number and conclude that things went the wrong direction for the labor movement last year. But I’d argue that adding nearly 300K members is the more important figure, and decent news for organized labor,” wrote New York Times labor reporter Noam Scheiber.
“The size of the U.S. workforce is going to jump around from year to year, and at the margins the new jobs are probably not going to be union jobs,” Scheiber continued. “But if the labor movement is adding 300K members each year, the percentage of unionized workers is generally going to increase over time.”
Some labor advocates pointed out that the union movement would be growing even more if labor laws weren’t severely skewed to favor employers in the U.S.
Though the rate of union membership reached a low, wrote Economic Policy Institute (EPI) President Heidi Shierholz, there were millions of workers who wanted to join a union but couldn’t. “How do we know that? Survey data show that 48 percent of nonunion workers — more than 60 million workers — would vote for a union in their workplace if they could,” Shierholz said.
In a blog post, Shierholz and other EPI experts said that the data shows the need for labor law reform.
“The fact that tens of millions of workers want to join a union and can’t is a glaring testament to how broken U.S. labor law is,” EPI wrote. “It is urgent that Congress pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act and the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act.”
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy