The Department of Labor has released its annual averages for unionization in the United States.
The raw number of private sector union members rose slightly, but declined (almost imperceptibly) as a share of the total number of U.S. workers. In government, unions shrank in absolute terms, but grew as a percentage of a shrinking public sector workforce.
Here is some of the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (full table here).
| 2010 | 2011 | YOY | |||||
| INDUSTRY | Employees | Union Employees | % Union | Employees | Union Employees | % Union | Union gain/loss |
| Private sector | 103,040,000 | 7,092,000 | 6.9 | 104,737,000 | 7,202,000 | 6.9 | 110,000 |
| Federal government | 3,670,000 | 984,000 | 26.8 | 3,568,000 | 1,004,000 | 28.1 | 20,000 |
| State government | 6,328,000 | 1,969,000 | 31.1 | 6,261,000 | 1,973,000 | 31.5 | 4,000 |
| Local government | 11,035,000 | 4,670,000 | 42.3 | 10,621,000 | 4,586,000 | 43.2 | -84,000 |
Also worthy of note: The number of non-union workers represented by unions declined by about 50,000, to 1.53 million.
