ILLINOIS UNION MEMBERS DWINDLE BY 20,000 IN 2014

2/1/2015

CHICAGO - The number of union members in Illinois dropped from 851,000 in 2013 to 831,000 in 2014, a new U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report issued last Friday indicates. Of the 5,397,000 employed in 2014, 15.1 percent were members of labor unions, compared to 15.8 percent union membership the year before. 

Compared to other high population states, Illinois' stats are average for union membership. In California, 16.4 are union members and in New York, 24.4 are union members. Illinois' 15.1 is slightly lower among the top five populated states. Florida is at 5.7 percent in 2014, while union members in Texas are the lowest of the top five most populated states, with 4.8 percent union membership.

The report is here:

Highlights from the 2014 United States data show:

• Public-sector workers had a union membership rate (35.7 percent), more than five times higher than that of private-sector workers (6.6 percent).  
• Workers in education, training, and library occupations and in protective service occupations had the highest unionization rate, at 35.3 percent for each occupation group.
• Men had a higher union membership rate (11.7 percent) than women (10.5 percent) in 2014.
• Black workers were more likely to be union members than were white, Asian, or Hispanic workers.
• Median weekly earnings of nonunion workers ($763) were 79 percent of earnings for workers who were union members ($970). (The comparisons of earnings in this release are on a broad level and do not control for many factors that can be important in explaining earnings differences.)
• Among states, New York continued to have the highest union membership rate (24.6 percent), and North Carolina again had the lowest rate (1.9 percent). 

More information HERE.

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