BLS shows decline in union membership in 2009

Today the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its annual Union Members Summary. It is a treasure trove of data. After two years of increasing union membership among wage and salary workers, union membership declined from 12.4% to 12.3%. In raw numbers the number of wage and salary workers belonging to unions declined by 771,000 to 15.3 million. Killer fact, there are more public sector union members (7.9 million) than private sector union members (7.4 million) despite 5 times more wage and salary jobs in the private sector. Public sector union membership rate is 37.4% private sector rate is 7.2%.