The number of unionists nationwide rose by 428,000 in 2008, pushing total union gains among the nation’s workers to almost three-quarters of a million in the last two years, the Labor Department reported.
Union density nationwide also increased, to 12.4% of all workers, from 12.1% in 2007 and 12% the year before that, the Bureau of Labor Statistics added. It called the 2007-2008 increase “statistically significant.”
While union density rose in 26 states and Washington, D.C., and declined in all but one of the rest, there were some warning signs among the numbers.
The prime one was half the nation’s unionists are still in just six states: California (2.74 million), New York (2.03 million), Illinois, (939,000) Pennsylvania (847,000), Michigan (771,000) and Ohio (716,000), in that order. But those states had only one-third of the nation’s workers, BLS said.
Another warning sign is that the union movement is gray: The highest shares of unionization by age were among workers aged 55-64 and 45-54, while the lowest share -- 5% -- was among workers aged 16-24, who are the new entrants to the workforce.
Several states had big jumps in union density, numbers, or both. One was California, where 266,000 more workers became unionists, and density rose from 16.7% in 2007 to 18.4% last year. Another was Illinois: Union density rose from 14.5% to 16.6% in one year, and the number of unionists increased by 97,000, to 939,000.
Missouri saw both union numbers and union density rise, while both fell slightly in Minnesota. Missouri unions added 10,000 members, to 285,000, and 11.2% of Show Me State workers are unionized, up 0.5% in one year.
But in Minnesota, union numbers, density and the overall workforce all dropped. Unions lost 8,000 members there, to 392,000, and are 16.1% of all workers, down from 16.4% the year before. But Minnesota also lost 30,000 workers overall.
Crashing employment in the auto industry appeared in Michigan, where the number of unionists declined by 48,000, to 771,000. Density declined from 19.5% in 2007 to 18.8% last year. The number of Michigan workers dropped by 104,000.
The same thing happened in Ohio: Union numbers declined by 14,000, to 716,000. But the state lost so many jobs that its union density rose 0.1%, within the BLS survey’s margin of error, to 14.2%.
Oregon had a similar pattern: Rising union density due to dropping employment. The number of Oregon unionists rose by 2,000, to 229,000, but density rose from 14.3% in 2007 to 16.6% in 2008.
Unionists maintained a huge wage advantage over their non-union colleagues, BLS said. The median weekly wage for union workers last year -- the point at which half are above and half below -- was $886, up $23 from the year before. For non-unionists, the median was $691, up $28.
The gaps were even larger for working women: Union women had median weekly wages last year of $809, or 86% of the $939 median for union men. Non-union women had a weekly median wage of $615, or 80% of non-union men’s median ($766).
Union density increased in a wide range of occupations from 2007 to 2008, even though two key sectors, construction and manufacturing, shed hundreds of thousands of jobs. BLS said there were 1.195 million unionized construction workers last year, or 15.6% of all building tradespeople. That’s up 2,000 from 2007, when union density was 13.9%. In the meantime, construction lost 909,000 workers.
And the nation’s factories employed 1.723 million union members last year, down slightly from 1.734 million in 2007. But union density rose 0.1% --within the survey’s margin of error -- to 11.4%, as factories shed more than 300,000 workers.
Local government was the most-unionized sector, rising in both numbers of unionists -- up 186,000 to 4.884 million -- and density, up 0.4%, to 41.8%. That reflected the high union densities in education and in protective services, particularly fire fighting.