by Tyler Arnold
The percentage of Ohio’s workforce that belongs to a union has continued its downward trajectory in 2019, according to numbers released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Union membership in the state declined by 0.7 percent from 2018 compared to 2019: decreasing from 12.6 percent of the workforce to 11.9 percent. However, Ohio still remains one of the most popular states for unions in the country.
The percentage of the national workforce that belongs to a union was 1.8 percent lower than Ohio at 10.1 percent. Ohio was also one of the leading states for total union members at 600,000.
According to the report, more than half of the country’s total union members came from seven states: California with 2.5 million, New York with 1.7 million, Illinois with 800,000, Pennsylvania with 700,000 and New Jersey, Ohio and Washington each with 600,000.
The national percentage of the workforce that belongs to a union decreased, as well, but not by as much as Ohio’s percentage decreased. The national percentage of the workforce decreased by 0.2 percentage points from 2018 to 2019: from 10.3 percent to 10.1 percent. This continues the downward trajectory that unions have seen in the past few decades.
In 1983, which is the first year for which this type of data is available, union membership was 20.1 percent of the workforce.
The national union membership rate was much higher in the public sector than the private sector: 33.6 percent to 6.2 percent respectively.
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Tyler Arnold reports on Virginia and Ohio for The Center Square. He previously worked for the Cause of Action Institute and has been published in Business Insider, USA TODAY College, National Review Online and the Washington Free Beacon.
Photo “Union Supporters” by AFGE. CC BY 2.0.
