Organized labor holds its own

Union membership essentially held its own last year, although total union membership remains historically low nationwide.

Total union membership was 11.1 percent in 2014, down 0.2 percent compared with 2013, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The total number wage and salary workers who belonged to a union last year was 14.6 million last year, essentially unchanged year-over-year.

In 1983, 20 percent of the U.S. labor force – about 17.7 million workers – were affiliated with a union, according to the bureau, which released its report on organized labor last week.

Public sector employees had a union membership of rate of 37.5 percent, more than five times higher than private-sector employees, whose union affiliation was only 6.6 percent. Workers in education, training and library jobs had the highest rate of union participation: 35.3 percent for each group, according to the bureau.

The data was taken from a survey of about 60,000 households.