In Rochester area, 13% of workers in union; 18% in Buffalo metro region

Union members accounted for 21 percent of wage and salary workers in New York State last year, more than twice the national average, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday.

New York had 1,732,000 union members in 2019, the federal agency said.

Chief Regional Economist Martin Kohli noted that New York had the second-highest union membership rate in the nation. Hawaii, with a union membership of 23.5 percent, had the nation’s highest rate, the bureau said.

Nationwide, union members accounted for 10.3 percent of employed wage and salary workers in 2019, down 0.2 percentage points from the 2018 rate. Since 1989, when comparable state data became available, union membership rates in New York have been above the U.S. average.

South Carolina and North Carolina had the lowest percent of union workers at 2.2 percent and 2.3 percent, respectively, in 2019.

Over half of the 14.6 million union members in the U.S. lived in just seven states (California, 2.5 million; New York, 1.7 million; Illinois, 0.8 million; Pennsylvania, 0.7 million; and New Jersey, Ohio, and Washington, 0.6 million each).

The federal estimates are obtained from the Current Population Survey (CPS), which provides basic information on the labor force, employment, and unemployment. The survey is conducted monthly for the Bureau of Labor Statistics by the U.S. Census Bureau from a scientifically selected national sample of about 60,000 eligible households. The union membership data are tabulated from one-quarter of the CPS monthly sample and are limited to wage and salary workers. All self-employed workers are excluded.

In the report “The State of the Unions 2019,” a profile of organized labor in New York City, New York State and the United States, authors Ruth Milkman and Stephanie Luce of the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, tracked labor membership density figures for the state, the New York City metropolitan area, and the next three largest metropolitan areas in the state — Albany-Schenectady-Troy, Buffalo-Niagara Falls, and Rochester.

“In each of the geographical entities for which 2018-19 data are available, unionization levels were consistently higher in the public than in the private sector… New York State public-sector density was 66.2 percent, nearly double the national average (of) 33.9 percent,” the report noted.

The reported continued, “Private-sector union density was lower across the board, but in this sector, New York State had a 13.0 unionization rate, more than double the national average of 6.4 percent in 2018-19.”

According to the Milkman-Luce organized labor profile, the Rochester metropolitan area had an overall union density of 13 percent, however, no information was available for a private sector vs. public sector comparison.

For the Buffalo-Niagara Falls metropolitan area, union membership destiny was 18 percent of all workers and 13 percent in the private sector. Public sector union destiny was not available.

Highlights from the national 2019 data:

• The union membership rate of public-sector workers (33.6 percent) continued to be more than five

times higher than the rate of private-sector workers (6.2 percent).

• The highest unionization rates were among workers in protective service occupations (33.8 percent) and in education, training, and library occupations (33.1 percent).

• Men continued to have a higher union membership rate (10.8 percent) than women (9.7 percent).

• Black workers remained more likely to be union members than White, Asian, or Hispanic workers.

• Nonunion workers had median weekly earnings that were 81 percent of earnings for workers who were union members ($892 versus $1,095).