In 2011, the number of workers belonging to a union was 270,000 in Oregon. Union members accounted for 17.1 percent of wage and salary workers in Oregon, compared to 11.8 percent nationwide.
In 2011, the number of workers belonging to a union was 270,000 in Oregon, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. Regional Commissioner Richard J. Holden noted that union members accounted for 17.1 percent of wage and salary workers in Oregon in 2011 compared with 16.2 percent reported in 2010.
Nationally, members accounted for 11.8 percent of employed wage and salary workers and 11.9 percent a year earlier. Since 1989, when comparable state data became available, Oregon has had union membership rates above the U.S. average, peaking at 21.6 percent at the start of the series.
In addition to the 270,000 wage and salary workers in Oregon who were union members in 2011, another 16,000 workers were represented by a union on their main job or covered by an employee association or contract while not being union members themselves. Nationwide, 1.5 million wage and salary workers were not affiliated with a union but had jobs covered by a union contract.
In 2011, 21 states had union membership rates above the U.S. average, 11.8 percent, of which 12 had rates above 15 percent. (See table 1.) Of the 12 states with the highest rates, 4 were located in the Northeast, 3 in the Midwest, and the remaining 5 bordered the Pacific Ocean. (See chart 2.) New York had the highest rate, followed by Alaska (22.1 percent), Hawaii (21.5 percent), and Washington (19.0 percent). In fact, New York has had the highest membership rate in the nation for 15 of the past 17 years.
Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia had union membership rates below the national average of 11.8 percent in 2011. Seven of these states, all in the South, had union membership rates below 5.0 percent, with North Carolina having the lowest, 2.9 percent. The next lowest rates were recorded in South Carolina (3.4 percent), Georgia (3.9 percent), Arkansas (4.2 percent), Louisiana (4.5 percent), and Tennessee and Virginia (4.6 percent each).
Over half of the 14.8 million union members in the United States lived in just seven states (California, 2.4 million; New York, 1.9 million; Illinois, 0.9 million; Pennsylvania, 0.8 million; Michigan, 0.7 million; and New Jersey and Ohio, 0.6 million each), though these states accounted for only one-third of wage and salary employment nationally.
State union membership levels depend on both the union membership rate and the employment level. For example, despite having 2.3 million fewer wage and salary employees statewide, New York had over four times as many union members as Texas. North Carolina and Hawaii, on the other hand, had comparable numbers of union members (105,000 and 113,000, respectively), though North Carolina’s wage and salary employment level (3.6 million) was nearly seven times that of Hawaii’s (525,000).
The latest Union Membership news release for Oregon is now available from BLS at http://www.bls.gov/ro9/unionor.pdf.
