Numbers released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show union membership in Connecticut increased from 2014 to 2015. That comes amidst higher overall employment numbers.
The statistics released Thursday show Connecticut’s union employment level at 269,000 (17) out of 1,587,000 workers. That is up from 245,000 (14.8 percent) out of 1,564,000 workers in 2014. In 2015, an additional 8,000 workers were covered by union contracts but they are not union members, which increases workers covered under union contracts to 277,000 (17.4 percent).
Nationally, the union membership rate–the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of unions–was 11.1 percent in 2015, unchanged from 2014. The number of wage and salary workers belonging to unions, at 14.8 million in 2015, was little different from 2014.
Highlights from the national 2015 data:
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Public-sector workers had a union membership rate (35.2 percent) more than five times higher than that of private-sector workers (6.7 percent).
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Workers in protective-service occupations and in education, training, and library occupations had the highest unionization rates (36.3 percent and 35.5 percent, respectively).
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Men continued to have a slightly higher union membership rate (11.5 percent) than women (10.6 percent).
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Black workers were more likely to be union members than were White, Asian, or Hispanic workers.
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Median weekly earnings of nonunion workers ($776) were 79 percent of earnings for workers who were union members ($980).
According to the BLS, state union membership levels depend on both the employment level and the union membership rate. The largest numbers of union members lived in California (2.5 million) and New York (2 million).
Roughly half of the 14.8 million union members in the U.S. lived in just seven states (California, 2.5 million; New York, 2 million; Illinois, 0.8 million; Pennsylvania, 0.7 million; and Michigan, Ohio, and New Jersey, 0.6 million each), though these states accounted for only about one-third of wage and salary employment nationally.
