States With The Strongest And Weakest Unions

There are 264,700 people working in Vermont, and 11.8% of them are in a labor union — a larger share than in most other states. As is typically the case, public sector workers in the state are far more likely to be members of a union than their private sector workers. As recently as 2020, a new law made it easier for public sector workers to form unions in the state.

While union membership has been declining in most of the country over the last decade, in Vermont, it has remained unchanged. Some of the most powerful unions in the state include the Vermont State Employees Association and the American Federation of Teachers.

There are over 357,700 union members working in Massachusetts, or 12.0% of the state’s total workforce. Union members include over half of the state’s 349,500 public sector workers — many of whom are members of the Massachusetts Teachers Association.

Despite the relative strength of organized labor in Massachusetts, the power of unions in the state is diminishing. Just a decade ago, 14.5% of workers in the state were union members.

In Montana, a higher than average 12.0% share of workers are members of a union. That share is down from 12.7% a decade ago, and soon, union membership in the state may decline even even further.

This year, the Montana state legislature will consider a legislation that would make it a so-called right-to-work state. Though similar proposals have been shot down in the past, this year, the balance of political power appears favorable for passage of the new anti-union law.

Maryland has the highest union participation rate of any state in the South. Of the nearly 2.7 million people working in the state, 13.1% are members of a labor union.

Union membership peaked in Maryland in 1989, when 16.1% of workers were unionized. In the last decade, membership has fluctuated considerably in the state. Membership fell to an all-time low of 10.4% in 2015. Still, membership has picked back up in the years since, and the current union membership rate is 1.5 percentage points higher than it was in 2010.

In Ohio, 13.2% of workers are members of labor unions. Though union participation in the Buckeye State is down half a percentage point from a decade ago and is nearly half of what it was in the early 1990s, unions have been strengthening recently. In 2019, just 11.9% of workers in the state were unionized.

Ohio is home to a high concentration of manufacturing companies, and over the last decade, the share of union membership in private sector manufacturing in the state fell by 6.2 percentage points. Despite the decline, jobs in production have the highest union participation rate of any other occupational category in the state.