2000 Union Members — 2001-01-18

The share of wage and salary workers who are union members averaged 13.5 percent in 2000 as compared with 13.9 percent in 1999, the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The number of union members, 16.3 million, also fell slightly from its 1999 level. The union membership rate has fallen from 20.1 percent in 1983, the first year for which comparable data are available. Some highlights from the 2000 data are: --Nearly 4 in 10 government workers were union members, compared with less than 1 in 10 private sector employees. --Protective service workers, a group that includes police officers and fire fighters, had the highest unionization rate--39.4 percent. --Blacks were more likely than either whites or Hispanics to be union members. In 2000, government workers continued to have a substantially higher unionization rate (37.5 percent) than workers in the private sector (9.0 percent).