States With The Strongest And Weakest Unions

With a relatively small workforce, and lower than average union membership of 7.6%, Wyoming is one of only two states where fewer than 20,000 workers are in a labor union. Union membership in the state is up slightly from 7.4% a decade ago.

Construction and extraction occupations are the most likely to have a unionized workforce in Wyoming. Some of the state’s largest unions include the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Utility Workers Union of America, and Service Employees International Union.

In Alabama, 8% of the workforce are in a labor union, a larger share than in most other southern states but below the share in most states nationwide. Membership rates have fluctuated considerably in the state in recent years. Though the share of Alabama workers in a union is 2.2 percentage points below what it was a decade ago, it is still above the all-time low of 7.4% reached in 2017.

Since record keeping began, union membership in Alabama peaked in 1993, when 14.3% of workers were in a union.

Along with Wisconsin and Iowa, Indiana is one of several states in the Midwest to recently enact so-called right-to-work laws. When the law went into effect in 2012, 9.1% of the workforce were in a union. Though union membership hit 10.7% in the state in 2014, it declined nearly every year after that and now stands at just 8.2%.

Manufacturing is a big economic driver in Indiana, and though union membership has declined by 9.4 percentage points in private sector manufacturing in the last decade, production occupations still have the highest concentration of union workers in the state.

Once a stronghold of organized labor, Wisconsin now has relatively weak labor unions. Just 8.7% of workers in the state are unionized, a smaller share than in most of the rest of the country.

Wisconsin was thrust into the national spotlight over a bitter political fight that resulted in the enactment of so-called right-to-work legislation in 2011, and the state expanded those laws again in 2015. That year, union membership fell to 8.3% from 11.7% in 2014. The shift came after a long and steady decline of union power in the state. As recently as 1989, nearly 21% of workers in Wisconsin were union members.

In Kansas, 8.8% of workers are union members, up from just 6.8% in 2010. The increase was due in part to an unusual increase in private sector union membership. Over the last decade, private sector union membership nationwide fell by half a percentage point. In Kansas, however, it increased by 1.8 percentage points, more than in every other state.

Major labor unions in the state include International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and United Steelworkers.