BLS: Pa. union membership grew slightly last year

Pennsylvania held the No. 4 spot nationally for union membership last year with 703,000 people, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That was up from about 701,000 in 2013.

In Pennsylvania, union members accounted for 12.7 percent of workers last year, which was in line with 2013 but down from 13.5 percent in 2012.

Pennsylvania hasn't been above 15 percent since 2009, according to the BLS.

The commonwealth was one of 19 states above the national average for union membership in 2014. The U.S. average was 11.1 percent last year compared to 11.3 percent in 2013, according to the BLS.

There were 14.6 million union members in the U.S. last year. In 1983, the first year for which comparable data was available, union membership was 20.1 percent and there were 17.7 million union workers.

There were 26 states above 10 percent last year, and three above 20 percent. New York led the way with a union membership rate of 24.6 percent.

Alaska was No. 2 at 22.8 percent, while Hawaii was No. 3 at 21.8 percent

Other U.S. highlights:

• Public-sector workers had a union membership rate of 35.7 percent compared to 6.6 percent in the private sector.
• Workers in education, training and library occupations and in protective service occupations had the highest unionization rate at 35.3 percent. The lowest rates were in farming, fishing and forestry occupations at 2.5 percent and sales and related occupations at 3.1 percent.
• There were more men (11.7 percent) than women (10.5 percent) in unions last year.
• Median weekly earnings of nonunion workers ($763) were 79 percent of earnings for workers who were union members.
• North Carolina had the lowest rate of union membership at 1.9 percent.
• California (2.47 million), New York (1.98 million) and Illinois (831,000) had more union members than Pennsylvania. Michigan, New Jersey and Ohio follow Pennsylvania for most union members.

Source: LVB.com