Five Things the New BLS Union Membership Statistics Don’t Tell You

Second, there’s even more organizing happening than the government union membership statistics seem to indicate, because these statistics only capture people who have secured an actual union contract. There’s been an uptick in organizing since the Covid pandemic, with 2024 marking a 10-year-high in National Labor Relations Board elections, though that rate significantly slowed down in the first year of the new Trump administration. Yet the post-pandemic organizing uptick has only begun to move the needle on membership numbers. Why? The BLS statistics only capture those people who either have a long-standing union contract or who have successfully jumped through all of the hoops it takes to win a contract within our nation’s broken labor law system. So, not a single one of the 12,000 Starbucks baristas who have voted to unionize across more than 600 stores since 2021 are counted in those membership statistics, for example, because Starbucks management won’t agree to a contract. The Starbucks workers’ experience is typical. Even after winning a union election, as of 2018, 63 percent of U.S. workers didn’t have a first contract after a year, and 43 percent after two years. The Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga who voted for the UAW in April of 2024 don’t show up in the latest numbers, because they only won their tentative contract earlier this month. It took them nearly two years to get a contract, and that was with an employer neutrality agreement. Those who organize, but can’t get a contract, aren’t counted in these statistics. 

Third, the union membership statistics don’t capture all of the people who would like to join unions, but who haven’t yet had a chance to do so. Studies have shown that nearly half of all workers say that they would form a union if given a chance. That’s roughly 60 million working people. Public support for unions, meanwhile, is sky high. A full 68 percent of people approve of unions, and that’s especially true of young people. Gen Z is the most pro-union generation, even more so than Boomers, Gen X or Millennials at their same age. And even as some Gen Z men shift rightward, they are particularly interested in unions’ promise of financial stability. People want to be part of unions. It’s up to unions to figure out how to bring them in, even if that means doing an end run around broken labor law and reformulating what it means to be a union member. 

Fourth, the BLS union membership statistics do nothing to demonstrate the new forms of worker justice organizing that have blossomed in the 21^st century. The statistics don’t count any of the thousands of workers who marched in the Fight for $15 movement and inspired dozens of states to raise their minimum wage, helping to put as much as $150 billion in workers’ pockets since 2012. They don’t include any of the workers who have joined worker centers or occupational groups like the National Domestic Workers’ Alliance, the New York City Taxi Workers’ Alliance, or the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. And they don’t count workers who are winning victories through collective action without a contract, like the Alphabet Workers Union / CWA who managed to force Google to end its gag order for all its workers who speak out on an anti-trust suit against the company. 

Finally, the union member statistics do not capture the widespread changes happening in America’s labor leadership. Over the last five years, more women and people of color have stepped into leadership roles, including at the top of organizations. AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler became the first woman elected to lead the nation’s umbrella organization of unions. SEIU’s President April Verrett became the first Black woman to hold the position in 2024. UNITE HERE President Gwen Mills is the first woman to lead not only that union, but any of its multiple predecessor unions. A third of the executive officers of state-level AFL-CIO bodies are now female, including 11 who were elected to the principal leadership role in the last five years. And younger people of color are taking the helm, too, such as Braxton Winston, the newly-elected president of the NC State AFL-CIO whose clenched fist salute to riot police went viral during Black Lives Matter. 

America’s labor movement has been going through a transition over the last decade that is far more layered and nuanced — and that holds more potential for future growth — than the BLS annual membership survey reveals. There is new experimentation, organizing, leadership and energy that heralds real hope. For clues on labor’s future, we should look beyond the lagging indicator of the BLS union membership numbers to the front lines, in workplaces and in the streets.