Sean P. Redmond Sean P. Redmond
Vice President, Labor Policy, U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Published

January 30, 2025

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The U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on January 28 released its annual union membership report for 2024. This year’s report showed that union membership as a percentage of the workforce declined by one-tenth of a point from 10% to 9.9%, the lowest percentage on record. The 2024 numbers illustrate a further, albeit minor, decline from 2023, when the union membership rate also dropped from 10.1% to 10% of the workforce, notwithstanding the “most pro-union” occupant of the White House ever for the last four years.

2024 Union Membership

According to the BLS, the number of wage and salary workers that belong to a union also fell modestly from 14.4 million to 14.3 million, the same level as it had been in 2022.  In particular, the number of union workers employed in the private sector in 2024 decreased by 184,000 to 7.2 million, which largely offset an increase of 191,000 the prior year. The unionization rate in the private sector also dipped from 6.0% to 5.9%.

As has been the case for many years, the union membership rate among government workers dwarfed that of the private sector, although the membership rate in that sector also dipped from 32.5% to 32.2%. Overall, the private sector still had slightly more union members than the public sector (7.2 million vs. 7.0 million), the latter of which did not see any decrease in terms of the actual number of members.

It is worth highlighting that the 5.9% union membership rate in the private sector yet again represents the lowest it has been since the apogee of union membership 70 years ago. Given the concerted “whole of government” approach the erstwhile Biden-Haris administration took to facilitate union membership, it seems their efforts to promote unionization were largely unsuccessful.

In the last year or so, some Republicans have embraced what they refer to as a more “pro-worker” agenda.  The new numbers suggest that such an approach does not need to involve pairing up with union bosses, who represent an increasingly smaller share of the private sector.

About the authors

Sean P. Redmond

Sean P. Redmond

Sean P. Redmond is Vice President, Labor Policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

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