Despite public opinion polls showing the highest approval of labor unions nationally in nearly 60 years, a record 83% of construction workers do not belong to a union, according to a new analysis.
Even more, notes the Associated Builders and Contractors study, roughly 90% of construction workers in 26 states are not union members.
“Data continues to suggest that the vast majority of construction industry professionals freely choose not to join a union,” remarked Ben Brubeck, vice president for regulatory, labor, and state affairs ABC, in a statement.
But the rate of construction worker unionization varies greatly from state to state, according to the ABC study, with roughly 30% of the workforce belonging to a union in Minnesota and Illinois, while the number dropped to around 25% in the Northern industrial states of Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
States in the West, including Arizona and New Mexico, saw some of the lowest construction worker union representation between 5% and 10%, while the statistics were well under 5% for Colorado, Texas, and Utah.
Nationally, union membership is now at 10.1%, down from 10.3% in 2021, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report issued in January. That 10.1% is the lowest recorded figure in more than four decades.
Organized labor has seen its greatest recent advances in the public sector arena, representing 33.1% of all workers, while membership in private sector jobs is now at a small 6%.
These figures come in the wake of a Gallup opinion survey late last summer showing that 71% of respondents said they approved of labor unions. That figure is substantially up from the 48% who said the same thing in 2009.
In fact, the 71% is the highest response rate on the question recorded by Gallup since 1965, when it also stood at 71%.
By Garry Boulard
