TheHappyVampire
Well-known member
Union membership in the US keeps on falling, like almost everywhere else
The United States of America is seeing a decline of union membership in both the private and public sectors. Also, the United States is not the only nation with declining union membership. According to Quartz, nearly every rich country like the United Kingdoms, Sweden, and South Korea have also seen a union membership decline.Unions were once a central force in the US economy. Their steady decline may be having an impact on inequality.
In 2018, just 10.5% of American workers were members of unions, according to recently released data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's is the lowest rate of membership since the bureau began collecting statistics in the early 1980s. Most analyses of pre-1980s union membership suggest it was close to 30% in the 1940s and 1950s.
The drop has been particularly steep in the private sector. Just 6.4% of workers in the private sector are unionized, compared with 16.8% in 1983. On the other hand, government employee unions, like those for teachers and postal workers, have remained fairly strong, with a small decline from about 37% of the workforce in 1983 to 34% in 2018.