National – According to new BLS Data, in 2018, union members accounted for 13.7% of wage and salary workers in Massachusetts and 16% in Connecticut compared to 12.4 and 16.9%, respectively, in 2017.
The New England Information Office of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has released data on union membership in Massachusetts and Connecticut from the Current Population Survey (CPS). The CPS is a monthly survey of households conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Census for the BLS. It provides a comprehensive body of data on the labor force, employment, unemployment and persons not in the labor force by demographic characteristic. Some highlights are listed below:
- Massachusetts and Connecticut both had union membership rates above the U.S. average of 10.5% in 2018.
- Massachusetts had 464,000 union members in 2018 and Connecticut had 268,000. An additional 29,000 wage and salary workers in Massachusetts and 12,000 in Connecticut were represented by a union on their main job or were covered by an employee association or contract while not union members themselves.
- Nationwide, 14.7 million wage and salary workers were union members in 2018, and 1.6 million wage and salary workers were not affiliated with a union but had jobs covered by a union contract.
- In 2018, 29 states and the District of Columbia had union membership rates below that of the U.S. average, 10.5%, while 20 states had rates above it and one state had the same rate.
