The Fact
In 1983, the first year for which the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has comparable union-membership data, 20.1% of wage and salary workers were union members. In 2025, the union-membership rate was 10.0%. That is a decline of 10.1 percentage points, leaving the union-membership share at roughly half its 1983 level.
What This Means
For a worker entering the labor market in the early 1980s, union membership was about twice as common as it is now. That changes how many workers are covered by organizations that collectively bargain over pay, benefits, and working conditions. The fact does not tell us why union membership declined; it establishes how large the change has been over the working lifetime of Gen X.
Sources
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Union Members — 2025, USDL-26-0229, released February 18, 2026. BLS Current Population Survey union-membership series.