Union Membership in Wisconsin Rebounded Slightly in 2023

Thursday, January 25th, 2024 -- 9:01 AM

(Joe Schulz, Wisconsin Public Radio) After plummeting to its lowest level on record in 2022, union membership in Wisconsin rebounded slightly last year, but it’s still far lower than it was decades ago.

According to Joe Schulz with Wisconsin Public Radio, that’s according to data released Tuesday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The estimated number of union members in the Badger State increased from roughly 187,000 in 2022 to about 204,000 last year, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows.

The unionization rate in Wisconsin also increased from 7.1 percent of workers in 2022 to 7.4 percent last year. Wisconsin’s union gains came as the share of workers nationally who were union members fell from 10.1 percent of workers in 2022 to 10 percent last year, the lowest level since the bureau began tracking data.

While the percentage of union members fell, due to the workforce growing faster than union membership, the number of unionized workers actually increased from 14.3 million the prior year to 14.4 million.

Despite the gains in Wisconsin, 2023 saw the second-lowest number of unionized workers in the state since at least 1989, with the first-lowest in 2022, according to historical data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Union membership in the state hovered between 215,000 and 230,000 from 2015 through 2021.

That makes it hard to tell if the membership gains in the new data reflect actual membership increases or a correction after an under-estimate last year, said Laura Dresser, associate director of the COWS economic think tank at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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