January 20, 2023

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) issued a report finding that the union membership rate—the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of unions—was 10.1% in 2022, down from 10.3% in 2021. The number of wage and salary workers belonging to unions, at 14.3 million in 2022, increased by 273,000 or 1.9 percent, from 2021. However, the total number of wage and salary workers grew by 5.3 million (mostly among nonunion workers), or 3.9%. Of particular interest to SWACCA, among construction workers, the total percent of employees represented by a union dropped from 13.6% in 2021 to 12.4% in 2022. The report also notes that the number of union workers employed in the private sector increased by 193,000 to 7.2 million over the year.

BLS notes that the disproportionately large increase in the number of total wage and salary employment compared with the increase in the number of union members led to a decrease in the union membership rate and highlighted that the 2022 unionization rate (10.1 percent) is the lowest on record.

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