After rising for three years, the percentage of union membership among Oklahoma workers dropped in 2014, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In 2014, the number of Oklahoma workers belonging to a union was 89,000, down from 114,000 in 2013 according to Regional Commissioner Stanley Suchman of the Southwest Information Office.
Union members accounted for 6.0 percent of all Oklahoma wage and salary workers in 2014, compared with 7.5 percent in 2013. During the same period, the national union membership rate dipped to 11.1 percent, down from 11.3 percent. Oklahoma union membership rates have been below the U.S. average since comparable state data became available in 1989.
New York had the highest union membership rate at 24.6 percent, followed by Alaska (22.8 percent) and Hawaii (21.8 percent. New York has had the highest union membership rate in the nation for 18 of the past 20 years. North Carolina registered the lowest union membership rate at 1.9 percent followed by South Carolina (2.2 percent) and Mississippi and Utah (both at 3.7 percent).
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