Union membership drops to new low despite organizing wave

The union membership rate in the U.S. hit a new low in 2022 despite a wave of organizing efforts across the country, according to Labor Department data released Thursday.  

The percentage of workers who were members of a union dropped to 10.1 percent, down from 10.3 percent. While the number of union workers increased by 273,000 last year, that only accounted for a small fraction of the 5.3 million jobs added.  

“This disproportionately large increase in the number of total wage and salary employment compared with the increase in the number of union members led to a decrease in the union membership rate,” the Bureau of Labor Statistics wrote in a news release.

Union membership has steadily fallen for decades amid anti-organizing efforts by corporations and Republican lawmakers. Roughly 20 percent of workers were union members in 1983.  

That trend continued last year, even as workers at Amazon, Starbucks, Apple and other companies voted to unionize for the first time, overcoming intense opposition from their employers. 

The number of union petitions rose 53 percent from 2021 to 2022, according to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The number of strikes also rose dramatically as workers protested stagnant wages, long hours and difficult working conditions. 

The AFL-CIO said that the figures “don’t capture” the recent surge in organizing. The nation’s largest labor federation said that those efforts will result in significant union member growth in the coming years. 

“In 2022, we saw working people rising up despite often illegal opposition from companies that would rather pay union-busting firms millions than give workers a seat at the table,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said in a statement. “The wave of organizing will continue to gather steam in 2023 and beyond despite broken labor laws that rig the system against workers.”

Unions are pushing lawmakers to make it easier for workers to organize, pointing to data that shows strong support for unions. An August Gallup poll found that 71 percent of Americans approve of unions, the highest figure in 57 years. 

While Republicans will continue to block pro-union legislation in Congress, labor has an ally in the Biden administration’s NLRB, whose general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, is a former union official. The NLRB has filed lawsuits against Amazon and other employers for cracking down on organizing and aims to ban anti-union tactics such as captive audience meetings.