Bureau of Labor Statistics

We’ve reported here on the Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers that showed that the numbers of unionized Americans continued its historic and sharp decline throughout 2012. But now that the dust has settled a little, can you guess which union remains the largest in terms of membership in the U.S.? The Teamsters? How about the UAW? Or perhaps the SEIU?

If you guessed any of those, you’d be wrong. The union with the largest membership in 2012 according to recently filed LM-2 reports remains the National Education Association which counts 3.1 million educators as members. But even the NEA shrunk in 2012, losing more than 99,000 members.

Other big losers in terms of membership numbers (from 2011 to 2012) include:

1. Teamsters – down 51,924 to 1.3 million (a 4 percent decrease)
2. Service Employees International Union – down 44,960 to 1.9 million
3. Laborers – 8,422 fewer members
4. United Food and Commercial Workers – 13,102-member drop
5. Machinists – lost 4,033 members

There were some increases though. The IBEW added 4,978 additional members in 2012. The UAW increased their membership in 2012 by 1,794 members to 382,513. The United Steelworkers also increased their membership in 2012 growing by 7,100 to 614,054 members.

Indiana union membership is at its lowest level since the 1980's. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, union members made up 9.1 percent of Indiana's workforce in 2012, down from 22 percent in 1983. The full story from the Indiana Business Journal can be found by clicking on the link below.

Indiana Business Journal – “Indiana Union Membership at Lowest Level in 24 Years”

As measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percentage of workers who are union members declined in 2012 for the fifth year in a row. The BLS annual report found that 11.3 percent of wage and salary workers were members of a union in 2012, down from 11.8 percent in 2011. The total number of workers belonging to a union also declined, down to 14.4 million from 14.8 million. As reported by the Washington Post, current union membership is the lowest since the 1930s.

Notably, states that have seen significant labor law fights in the last year were among those who saw the greatest decline in union membership. Indiana, which enacted Right to Work legislation in 2012, saw its union numbers decline from 11.3 percent to 9.1 percent. Similarly, Michigan, which also passed Right to Work as well as limiting public sector collective bargaining last year, saw its union membership decline from 17.5 percent to 16.6 percent. Wisconsin’s union membership rate fell to 11.2 percent from 13.3 percent, a decline that may have been affected by Wisconsin’s limits on public bargaining passed in 2011.

The full BLS report is available on the Department of Labor’s website here.

While the debate about the fiscal cliff has been about what services to eliminate and how much to raise taxes, ignored almost entirely is the fact that the government grossly overpays for the services it buys.

According to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median salary for a federal government employee (including the Post Office) was $70,100 per year. For all private sector workers, that number was $43,980. That is, federal government employees are paid 59.4 percent more in salary than their private sector counterparts.

This differential does not include the higher costs of benefits to federal employees that one Congressional Budget Office study recently pegged as being 44.7 percent greater. That same CBO study which attempted to control for factors including educational attainment and regional variations concluded that the wage differential (excluding benefits) between federal employees and private sector workers was 14.7 percent.

Given that the federal government currently spends approximately $200 billion on its civilian employees, eliminating this wage gap would result in significant cost savings to the American taxpayer. Even without adjusting benefit costs (which itself could provide significant cost savings), simply eliminating the wage disparity could provide $300 billion in deficit reduction over the next ten years – all without eliminating a single federal program. 

Later this month, we will look at cost savings from eliminating so-called prevailing wage programs that amount to transfer payments to unionized construction workers.

While most employers treat any strike as “major,” the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) labels only work stoppages involving 1,000 or more employees as major. The BLS just released the major work stoppage data for 2011. The data, which includes both strikes and lockouts, revealed the five-year highs totals in number of major strikes and numbers of workers involved and a four-year high in the number of idle days involved. The number of major work stoppages increased 72.7 percent and idle days increased 338 percent from their 2010 levels. This data is further confirmation that organized labor is increasingly militant following the improvement in the economy from the depths and 2008-2009 recession and union friendly administration in Washington, D.C. 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics just released a report detailing job openings and labor turnover in October. According to the report, there were 3.3 million job openings on the last business day of October. The job openings rate has been on an upward trend since the end of the recession in June of 2009. The full report can be found here.

Nonunionized workers' pay rose more than unionized workers over the past 12 months (ending in September). According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report released on Dec. 7, 2011, the average hourly pay of nonunion workers rose to $19.55 from $19.28 (1.4%). In contrast, unionized employees compensation rose $23.19 to $23.26 (0.3%).  The December 2010 data can be found here.