Union members accounted for 21 percent of wage and salary workers in New York State last year, more than twice the national average.
New York had 1,732,000 union members in 2019, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is the second-highest membership in the nation next to Hawaii. Nationwide, 10.3 percent of employed wage and salary workers are union members.
Over half of the 14.6 million union members in the U.S. lived in just seven states including California, 2.5 million; New York, 1.7 million; Illinois, 0.8 million; Pennsylvania, 0.7 million; and New Jersey, Ohio, and Washington, 0.6 million.
In each of the geographical entities for which 2018-19 data are available, unionization levels were consistently higher in the public than in the private sector. New York State public-sector density was 66.2 percent, nearly double the national average of 33.9 percent in this category.
