Union members made up 23.2 percent of all wage and salary workers in New York state in 2012, down from 24.1 percent the year before, according to new statistics issued by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) today.
The Empire State’s union-membership rate is now at its lowest level since 1989, when the BLS began tracking the statistic by state. In the most-recent 10-year period, New York’s rate peaked in 2005 at 26.1 percent.
Despite the decline, New York’s union-membership rate is still higher than any other state and is double the U.S. average of 11.3 percent, the BLS data shows.
New York had 1.84 million union members in 2012 out of 7.94 million total people employed, the BLS reported. When factoring in non-union members whose jobs are covered by a union contract, the number of workers represented by unions in the state totals 1.98 million, or 24.9 percent of all workers.
Contact Rombel at arombel@cnybj.com