2001 Union Members — 2002-01-17

In 2001, 13.5 percent of wage and salary workers were union members, unchanged from 2000, the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The union membership rate has fallen from a high of 20.1 percent in 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available. Some highlights from the 2001 data are: --In both 2001 and 2000, about 16.3 million wage and salary workers were union members. --Nearly 4 in 10 government workers were union members in 2001, compared with less than 1 in 10 private wage and salary workers. --Protective service workers, a group that includes police officers and firefighters, had the highest unionization rate among all occupations, at 38 percent. In 2001, workers in the public sector continued to have unionization rates that were about four times higher than their counterparts in private industry. The unionization rate of government workers was 37.4 percent, compared with 9.0 percent among private sector employees.