Some figures from the BLS that illustrate the trends in the US labor force — namely that about 7% of private sector employees belong to a union while almost 40% of government employees are unionized:

In 2009, 7.9 million public sector employees belonged to a union, compared with 7.4 million union workers in the private sector. The union membership rate for public sector workers (37%) was substantially higher than the rate for private industry workers (7%). Within the public sector, local government workers had the highest union membership rate, 43%. This group includes workers in heavily unionized occupations, such as teachers, police officers, and fire fighters.

Private sector industries with high unionization rates included transportation and utilities (22%), telecommunications (16%), and construction (14%). In 2009, low unionization rates occurred in agriculture and related industries (1%) and financial activities (2%)…

– More public sector employees (7.9 million) belonged to a union than did private sector employees (7.4 million), despite there being 5 times more wage and salary workers in the private sector.

– Workers in education, training, and library occupations had the highest unionization rate at 38%.

NYT: “The overall unionization rate edged lower, to 12.3 percent last year from 12.4 percent in 2008…7.2 percent of private-sector workers were union members last year, down from 7.6 percent the previous year. That, labor historians said, was the lowest percentage of private-sector workers in unions since 1900.”

“Workers in education, training and library occupations had the highest unionization rate at 38%.” Now it is easy to understand why our educational institutions are the way they are.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 6:03 am and is filed under business, Democrats, General, Republicans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.