Union Membership (Annual) U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
UNION MEMBERS IN 2003
In 2003, 12.9 percent of wage and salary workers were union members, down from 13.3 percent in 2002, the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau ofLabor Statistics reported today. The number of persons belonging to a union fell by 369,000 over the year to 15.8 million in 2003. The union membership rate has steadily declined from a high of 20.1 percent in 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available. Some
highlights from the 2003 data are:
--Men were more likely to be union members than women.
--Blacks were more likely to be union members than were whites, Asians, and Hispanics or Latinos.
--Nearly 4 in 10 government workers were union members in 2003, compared with less than 1 in 10 workers in private-sector industries.