Long-Declining Union Membership Levels Of

By WILL LESTER, Associated Press Writer
Sat Jan 21, 5:55 AM ET

Long-declining union membership leveled off last year at 12.5 percent of the work force, the Labor Department said Friday in a report labor leaders called encouraging.

Union membership was about a third of the work force a half-century ago, and was one in five, 20 percent, in 1983, when the Labor Department started keeping such data.

The department said 15.7 million workers were union members in 2005. Blacks were more likely than whites, Hispanics or Asian workers to be members of a union. Men were more likely than women to be in unions and those in the public sector were four times as likely as those in the private sector to be in unions.