California’s labor movement didn’t have a swell 2018 and shrinking membership could be bad for your wealth, union fan or not.

Two blows hit organized labor last year. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states can’t force government workers to pay union dues, and overall membership statewide fell to a 14-year low.

Unions here and across the nation are dealing with an increasingly hostile environment for growth. Penny-pinching bosses fight hard against unionized workplaces. And workers, scarred from the Great Recession’s mass layoffs, seem more concerned about having any job vs. one with bargaining power.

I filled my trusty spreadsheet with new union data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and UnionStats.com and found that California remains organized labors’ top state with 2.4 million members in 2018. But that was the lowest count since the economic boom days of 2004.

Last year, union ranks statewide thinned by 86,000 — a drop of 3.4 percent. Organized labor in only 17 other states fared worse. This union dip in California came despite a 2.1 percent jump in all jobs statewide in 2018.

As a result, 14.7 percent of California workers were union members, the ninth-highest share nationally. That’s down from 15.5 percent in 2017. By the way, No .1 for union penetration is Hawaii at 23.1 percent; next is New York at 22.3 percent, then Washington at 19.8 percent.

But union slippage is not just happening in California. Nationally, union membership fell 0.5 percent in 2018. Labor’s slice of workers dropped to 10.5 from 10.7 percent in 2017.

Much like the nation, California’s unionized hotspot is government-related work. Public-sector union membership statewide was 1.24 million last year — No. 1 nationally. But that, too, was down — off 9.2 percent in a year that saw statewide government jobs overall fall by just 0.7 percent.

Still, 50.3 percent of California government workers are union members, down from 55 percent in 2017. Nationally, union membership in government jobs dropped 0.7 percent in 2018; labor’s slice of all government workers fell to 33.9 from 34.4 percent in 2017.

A bright spot for California unions was 3.7 percent growth in private-industry membership to 1.16 million — again, No. 1 nationally. Union growth in this niche even topped a 2.6 percent hiring pace in the overall private sector.

But the labor movement holds a tiny slice of those working for private employers — 8.3 percent are unionized in California compared with the national average of 6.4 percent.

California unions grew at the factory with manufacturing membership at 121,900 — No. 2 nationally — up 22.8 percent in a year. Unions hold 7.6 percent of statewide factory jobs vs. 9 percent nationally.

But unions slipped at California construction sites with membership falling 8.9 percent to 143,700 in 2018 (yes, No. 1 nationally). Statewide, 15.9 percent of construction workers were unionized vs. 12.8 percent nationwide.

The bottom line is unions have become a fairly unpopular option for California labor.

As recently as 2008, unions saw their cyclical high — 18.4 percent of jobs statewide. Then came economic meltdown. Post-recession, jobs growth has been outside of union territory.

California bosses added 1.5 million jobs — 10 percent — between 2008 and 2018. In that same decade, unions lost 335,000 members, a 12 percent decline.

Compare that divergence with the previous 10-year period which saw California bosses adding 1.6 million jobs (or 12 percent growth) between 1998 and 2008. In that same period, union membership grew by 586,000 jobs or 27 percent.

I know many folks don’t like the concept of collective bargaining and some of the limits unions can put on workplace flexibility. But at the same time organized labor has lost its muscle, wages have stagnated and benefits pruned.

According to the UC Berkeley Labor Center, California union pay was 13 percent above similar non-union workers. Union workers were 37 percent more likely to be offered health insurance by their employers and 31 percent less likely to be part of a family receiving public assistance.

Or ponder what my spreadsheet tells me: In 1998-2008, California’s median household income grew at a 3.3 percent annual rate. Since then, just 2.2 percent.