UNION MEMBERS -- 2025

News Release from BLS, Feb 18, 2026

The union membership rate--the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of unions--was 10.0 percent in 2025, little changed from the prior year, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The number of wage and salary workers belonging to unions was 14.7 million in 2025.  In 1983, the first year for which comparable data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent and there were 17.7 million union members.

Data about union members are collected as part of the Current Population Survey, a nationwide sample survey of households in which people are asked, among other things, about union membership. (See the Technical Note in this news release.) 

Federal Government Shutdown Impact on Union Data

The Current Population Survey (CPS) for October 2025 was not collected due to the federal government shutdown. As a result, annual estimates for 2025 household survey data were produced using 11-month averages that exclude October. Consequently, 2025 annual estimates are not strictly comparable with annual averages for other years.

Because union membership and earnings data are collected from only one quarter of the CPS sample, they are already based on a relatively small number of observations and are even more affected by the lack of October data. In particular, state union membership estimates for 2025 should be interpreted with caution.

For information about the impact of the federal government shutdown on CPS data, see www.bls.gov/cps/methods/2025-federal-government-shutdown-impact-cps.htm.

Highlights from the 2025 data: 

 --The union membership rate of public-sector workers (32.9 percent) continued to be more than five times higher than the rate of private-sector workers (5.9 percent). (See table 3.)

 --Workers in education, training, and library occupations (32.5 percent) and in protective service occupations (31.3 percent) had the highest unionization rates. (See table 3.)

 --Men continued to have a higher union membership rate (10.4 percent) than women (9.6 percent).  (See table 1.)

 --Black workers remained more likely to be union members (11.4 percent) than White (9.9 percent), Asian (8.7 percent), and Hispanic (8.9 percent) workers. (See table 1.)

 --Nonunion workers had median weekly earnings that were 84 percent of earnings for workers who were union members ($1,174 versus $1,404). (The comparisons of earnings in this news release are on a broad level and do not control for many factors that can be important in explaining earnings differences.) (See table 2.)

Industry and Occupation of Union Members

In 2025, the number of employees who belonged to unions was similar in the public sector (7.3 million) and the private sector (7.4 million). (See table 3.)

The public-sector union membership rate, at 32.9 percent, increased by 0.7 percentage point over the year. The union membership rate continued to be highest in local government (37.8 percent), which employs many workers in heavily unionized occupations, such as police officers, firefighters, and teachers.

The union membership rate in the private sector, at 5.9 percent, was unchanged over the year. Industries with the highest unionization rates in 2025 included utilities (17.8 percent), transportation and warehousing (13.6 percent), and educational services (13.4 percent). The lowest unionization rates occurred in finance (0.8 percent), insurance (1.2 percent), professional and technical services (1.3 percent), agriculture and related industries (1.6 percent), and food services and drinking places (1.8 percent).

Among occupational groups, the highest union membership rates in 2025 were in education, training, and library occupations (32.5 percent) and protective service occupations (31.3 percent). Membership rates were lowest in farming, fishing, and forestry occupations (2.4 percent) and sales and related occupations (2.5 percent).

Selected Characteristics of Union Members

In 2025, the unionization rate for women was little changed over the year at 9.6 percent, and the number of women who were union members was 6.8 million. Meanwhile, the unionization rate for men increased 0.2 percentage point to 10.4 percent, and the number of men who were union members was 7.9 million. The gap between union membership rates for men and women has narrowed
considerably since 1983, when rates for men and women were 24.7 percent and 14.6 percent, respectively. (See table 1.)

Among the major race and ethnicity groups, Black workers continued to have a higher union membership rate in 2025 (11.4 percent) than White (9.9 percent), Asian (8.7 percent), and Hispanic (8.9 percent) workers. Over the year, the union membership rate increased for White (+0.3 percentage point) and Hispanic (+0.4 percentage point) workers and was little changed for Black and Asian workers.

By age, workers ages 45 to 54 had the highest union membership rate in 2025, at 12.6 percent.  Younger workers--those ages 16 to 24--had the lowest union membership rate, at 4.7 percent.

In 2025, the union membership rate continued to be higher for full-time workers (10.9 percent) than for part-time workers (5.7 percent).

Union Representation

In 2025, 16.5 million wage and salary workers were represented by a union. The percentage of workers represented by a union was 11.2 percent in 2025, little different than a year earlier.  Workers represented by a union include both union members (14.7 million) and workers who report no union affiliation but whose jobs are covered by a union contract (1.8 million). (See table 1.)

Earnings

Among full-time wage and salary workers, union members had median usual weekly earnings of $1,404 in 2025, while nonunion workers had median usual weekly earnings of $1,174. In addition to coverage by a collective bargaining agreement, these earnings differences reflect a variety of factors, including variations in the distributions of union members and nonunion employees
by occupation, industry, age, firm size, or geographic region. (See tables 2 and 4.)

Union Membership by State

Across states, the rates of union membership varied widely, ranging from below 5 percent to nearly 25 percent. State union membership data for 2025 are based on relatively few observations and only allow for broad characterizations. (See table 5. See the note at the beginning of this news release about the federal government shutdown.)

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SA: Hawaii union membership in 2025 led nation at 26% | Honolulu Star-Advertiser (NOTE:  Headline is wrong.  Real ‘membership’ number is 24.8%.)

Union Members Technical Note

Table 1. Union affiliation of employed wage and salary workers by selected characteristics, 2024-2025 annual averages

Table 2. Median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers by union affiliation and selected characteristics, 2024-2025 annual averages

Table 3. Union affiliation of employed wage and salary workers by occupation and industry, 2024-2025 annual averages

Table 4. Median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers by union affiliation, occupation, and industry, 2024-2025 annual averages

Table 5. Union affiliation of employed wage and salary workers by state, 2024-2025 annual averages