In 2012, union members accounted for 18.5 percent of wage and salary workers in Washington, compared with 19.0 percent reported in 2011, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Regional Commissioner Richard J. Holden noted that at its peak in 1993, Washington’s union membership rate was 23.8 percent. Nationally, union members accounted for 11.3 percent of employed wage and salary workers, down from 11.8 percent a year earlier. (See chart 1.)

In addition to the 513,000 wage and salary workers in Washington who were union members in 2012, another 28,000 workers were represented by a union on their main job or covered by an employee association or contract while not being union members themselves. (See table A.) Nationwide, 14.4 million wage and salary workers were union members in 2012 and 1.6 million workers were not affiliated with a union but had jobs covered by a union contract.

In 2012, 19 states had union membership rates above the U.S. average, of which 9 had rates above 15 percent. (See table 1.) Of the nine states with the highest rates, three were located in the Northeast, one in the Midwest, and the remaining five were in the West. (See chart 2.) New York had the highest rate (23.2 percent), followed by Alaska (22.4 percent), Hawaii (21.6 percent), and Washington (18.5 percent). In fact, New York has had the highest membership rate in the nation for 16 of the past 18 years.

Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia had union membership rates below the national average of 11.3 percent in 2012. Eight of these states had union membership rates below 5.0 percent, with North Carolina having the lowest, 2.9 percent. The next lowest rates were recorded in Arkansas (3.2 percent), South Carolina (3.3 percent), and Mississippi (4.3 percent).

About half of the 14.4 million union members in the United States lived in just seven states (California, 2.5 million; New York, 1.8 million; Illinois, 0.8 million; Pennsylvania, 0.7 million; and Michigan, New Jersey, and Ohio, 0.6 million each), though these states accounted for only about one-third of wage and salary employment nationally.

State union membership levels depend on both the state wage and salary employment level and the union membership rate. For example, with a union membership rate of 5.7 percent, Texas had about one-third as many union members as New York, despite having 2.7 million more wage and salary employees. North Carolina and Hawaii had comparable numbers of union members (112,000 and 116,000, respectively), though North Carolina’s wage and salary employment level (3.8 million) was nearly seven times that of Hawaii (537,000).

Technical Note

The estimates in this release are obtained from the Current Population Survey (CPS), which provides the basic information on the labor force, employment, and unemployment. The survey is conducted monthly for the Bureau of Labor Statistics by the U.S. Census Bureau from a scientifically selected national sample of about 60,000 households. The union membership and earnings data are tabulated from one-quarter of the CPS monthly sample and are limited to wage and salary workers. All self-employed workers are excluded.

Union membership data, particularly for levels, are not strictly comparable with data for earlier years because of the introduction of updated population controls used in the CPS. These updated controls have little or no effect on unemployment rates and other ratios, such as union membership rates. For technical documentation and related information, including reliability of the CPS estimates, see www.bls.gov/cps/documentation.htm.

Information in this release will be made available to sensory impaired individuals upon request. Voice phone: 202-691-5200, Federal Relay Service: 800-877-8339.

The principal definitions used in this release are described briefly below.

Union members. Members of a labor union or an employee association similar to a union.

Represented by unions. Union members, as well as workers who have no union affiliation but whose jobs are covered by a union or an employee association contract.

Wage and salary workers. Workers who receive wages, salaries, commissions, tips, payment in kind, or piece rates. The group includes employees in both the private and public sectors, but, for the purposes of the union membership and earnings series, excludes all self-employed persons, regardless of whether or not their businesses are incorporated.