States With The Strongest And Weakest Unions

Of the 2.5 million people working in Missouri, only 9.4% are members of a labor union. Though Missouri does not have “right-to-work” laws on the books, union membership is lower in the state than it is in several so-called right-to-work states, including Nebraska, Nevada, and West Virginia.

Since record keeping began, union membership peaked in Missouri in 1989, when 15.5% of workers were unionized. Membership in the state bottomed out in 2014, when just 8.4% of workers were in a union.

In Nebraska, just 9.6% of workers are union members. Though organized labor is less powerful in Nebraska than it is nationwide on average, membership in the state is relatively strong compared to most other so-called right-to-work states. Nebraska first enacted so-ca;;ed right-to-work laws in 1947.

Though Nebraska has lower union membership than the U.S. as a whole, public sector workers in the state are slightly more likely to be unionized than most public workers nationwide. An estimated 35.1% of government employees in Nebraska are union members, compared to 34.8% of government workers nationwide.

Of all states in New England, New Hampshire has the lowest union participation rate. Just 9.8% of workers in the state are union members, a full percentage point below the comparable share of workers nationwide.

The lower than average union participation in the state is largely attributable to the private sector. Just 4.3% of private sector workers in New Hampshire are unionized, 2 percentage points below the national average. Meanwhile, 44.1% of the state’s public sector workers are in a union, nearly 10 percentage points higher than the U.S. average.

About one in every 10 workers in Delaware are members of a labor union, a slightly smaller share than the national average. As is the case nationwide, government workers are far more likely to be in a union than workers in the private sector. Less than 5% of the 356,000 private sector workers in Delaware are unionized, compared to well over a third of the state’s 68,000 public sector employees.

As is the case nationwide, the power of unions has eroded in Delaware over the last decade. As recently as 2010, 11.4% of workers in the state were union members.

In West Virginia, 10.6% of workers are members of a labor union, just slightly below the national average. Though union membership is lower in the state than it is nationwide, unions are stronger in West Virginia than they are in nearly every other state with “right-to-work” laws.

West Virginia became a so-called right-to-work state in 2016 — and those relatively new laws appear to have had a meaningful impact on union membership. The share of workers in a union fell in the state by a near nation-leading 4.1 percentage points from 2010 to 2020.