Hartford Business Journal

6 HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | FEBRUARY 10, 2025 What's Trending COMPLETE CATALOG 1-800-295-5510 uline.com LARGEST IN-STOCK INVENTORY OF SHIPPING SUPPLIES π ORDER BY 6 PM FOR SAME DAY SHIPPING 24_014499_Hartford_Business_Journal_FEB Mod: December 16, 2024 10:56 AM Print: 12/27/24 page 1 v2.5 Union membership rises in CT, hits new low nationally efforts played out in the state. Baristas at several Connecticut Star- bucks voted to unionize, and staff at Hearst Connecticut Media Group, the state's largest newspaper publisher, announced plans to form a union. Connecticut has the fourth-highest union membership rate behind Hawaii (26.5%), New York (20.6%) and Alaska (17.7%). STATES WITH THE HIGHEST UNION MEMBERSHIP RATES STATE % OF UNION MEMBERS Hawaii 26.5 New York 20.6 Alaska 17.7 Connecticut 16.5 New Jersey 16.2 Washington 16 Oregon 15.9 Massachusetts 14.6 California 14.5 Rhode Island 14.5 Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics NO. OF UNION MEMBERS IN CT By Greg Bordonaro gbordonaro@hartfordbusiness.com U nion membership in the U.S. hit a new low in 2024, but Connecticut is bucking the national trend as organized labor continues to show a post-pandemic resurgence in the state, new federal data shows. Nationally, the percentage of wage and salary workers who were union members in 2024 was 9.9%, down slightly from 10% in 2023, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's well below the U.S.' peak 20.3% union membership rate in 1983, the first year the data was made avail- able. Overall, 14 million U.S. workers were in unions last year out of a labor force of 145 million people. Conversely, the number of Connecticut workers in unions rose for a fourth straight year in 2024. There were 269,000 union members in Connecticut in 2024, up 5.5% from 2023, BLS data shows. In 2024, 16.5% of the state's 1.634 million employed residents were union members, while 17.8% were represented by unions, BLS data shows. That was up from 15.9% and 16.9%, respectively, in 2023. Last year's increase came as several high-profile unionization Nationally, the union membership rate of public-sector workers (32.2%) continued to be more than five times higher than the rate of private-sector workers (5.9%), according to BLS. The highest unionization rates were among workers in education, training and library occupations (32.3%), and protective service occupations (29.6%). Men continued to have a higher union membership rate (10.2%) than women (9.5%), BLS said. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2014 2014 2015 2015 2016 2016 2017 2017 2018 2018 2019 2019 2020 2020 2021 2021 2022 2022 2023 2023 2024 2024 300K 250K 200K 20% 15% 10% PERCENT OF EMPLOYED CT RESIDENTS WHO ARE UNION MEMBERS

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