U.S. Union Membership Rate, 1964-2018

Even before the Supreme Court piled on, American unions were in a bad way. In their heyday in the mid-1950s, more than 30% of workers were members. Today just 10.5% are. With only a toehold in the private sector—where they cover a mere 7% of workers—unions have become increasingly reliant on faithful public-sector employees, 34% of whom are members, to stay financially afloat and politically relevant. The Supreme Court’s ruling in the case of Janus v AFSCME at the end of June will shrink the rump of union members even further. What will the consequences of even lower union membership be?

The union membership rate—the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of unions—was 10.5 percent in 2018, down by 0.2 percentage point from 2017. The number of wage and salary workers belonging to unions, 14.7 million in 2018, was about the same as in 2017. In 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent and there were 17.7 million union workers.

In 2018, the union membership rate continued to be higher for men (11.1 percent) than for women (9.9 percent). The gap between their rates has narrowed considerably since 1983, when the rate for men was 24.7 percent and the rate for women was 14.6 percent.