Today’s release of union data showed women of color and part-time workers led the gains in union membership growth in 2024. While the rate of union membership overall was little changed in 2024, clocking in at 9.9 percent, compared to 10.0 percent in 2023, women of color – especially Black and Asian women – saw sizable increases.
The share of Black women workers who are union members increased from 10.5 percent to 10.9 percent, and Asian women increased from 7.8 percent to 9.1 percent. After leading women’s union growth in 2023, Latinas were fairly steady at 8.9 percent, up from 8.8 percent in 2023, while white women were at 9.2 percent in 2024, compared to 9.3 percent in 2023. Union membership for women overall was flat at 9.5 percent while men’s membership declined to 10.5 percent from 10.2 percent. While men still have a higher unionization rate than women, the gap has narrowed significantly since the early 1980s. Due to a lack of investment in necessary data infrastructure, union membership data for American Indian/Alaskan Native, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander and multiracial women are not included in this data release.
Additionally, part-time workers saw an increase in union membership from 5.2 percent to 5.7 percent in 2024, an almost 10 percent increase. This could be due to the growing efforts of workers to organize within giant retail corporations, such as Starbucks and Amazon. It’s worth noting that women are much more likely than men to work part-time due in part to unbalanced care obligations. Union membership is vital to ensuring workplaces are friendly to all workers – including caregivers.
This growth among women of color is the product of the tireless efforts of union leaders – increasingly women of color – as well as organizers and members. And unions have been buoyed by growing public and political support. Unions saw near record highs of public support in 2024, with 70 percent of people approving of unions and 60 million workers saying they would join a union if they could. And unions have benefited from years of supportive investments by the Biden administration, which reinvigorated the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency dedicated to protecting employees’ rights to organize and addressing unfair labor practices. Over the past four years, the NLRB took actions such as improving workers’ ability to organize by restoring Obama-era union election rules and making it more difficult for employers to make unilateral changes to their operations in a unionized environment, among a slew of other decisions to improve workers’ rights. They’ve also presided over a blistering pace of unions filing for elections, the vast majority of which are being won.
Union membership increases gender and racial equity
Growing union membership is especially important for women. Our analysis of the new data finds that union members and those represented by unions have higher wages compared to their non-union counterparts, to the tune of 17.5 percent for members. Women overall receive a bigger bump than men, and the “union bump” among women workers is especially large for Latinas. Among full-time Latina workers, union members typically are paid $1,035 each week, compared to just $813 each week among non-union workers, a bump of 27 percent or $11,500 a year. And these higher wages mean union workers overall have a smaller gender wage gap than non-union workers: among full-time workers who aren’t in unions, women are typically paid just 82 cents for every dollar paid to a man – while among union members, women are paid 87 cents to a man’s dollar.
Improving union membership for women is essential beyond wages. Women union members have more access to essential benefits like paid leave, pensions, and health coverage – benefits women are especially likely to lack – and unions have initiated efforts to support access to reproductive health care and gender affirming care. Yet, as today’s data make clear, women have not always benefitted as much from unions as men have. Women’s union membership – especially union membership for Latinas and Asian women – still lags behind men’s, and everyone is far below the peak union rates of the 1940s. That’s why having women union leaders like Becky Pringle, April Verrett and Liz Shuler, organizers like Ai-Jen Poo, and supporting organizing efforts in women-dominated industries like domestic work and child care is so essential – as is bringing a gender analysis to the current union resurgence. Having women of color leaders in union positions has led to important wins regarding parental leave and sexual harassment prevention, as they bring their lived experiences into union leadership and provide perspectives that have often been lacking. More broadly, unions are key tools against income inequality, racial equity and the erosion of democracy.
Threats to workers’ rights loom in 2025
The Trump administration has advanced numerous proposals that would undercut workers’ rights broadly including undermining the EEOC and rolling back regulations that support better pay and safety for workers, as well as working furiously to dismantle essential diversity, equity and inclusion programs and unprecedentedly firing NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox, leaving the NLRB unable to continue its work. Additionally, key Trump allies have made clear that they oppose unions, with Elon Musk – a central figure in the president’s orbit who contributed hundreds of millions to his election – going so far as to say he “disagree[s] with the idea of unions.” These efforts would return us to a time when policymakers were focused on dismantling the power of unions – decades’ long efforts that have resulted in today’s rate of union membership being less than one-third of what it was at its all-time high in 1945.
Instead of undermining worker power, policymakers should be focused on legislation like the PRO Act which would strengthen workers’ ability to unionize and bargain collectively, impose stronger remedies when employers interfere with those rights or refuse to bargain in good faith and address employers’ misclassification of workers as contractors for collective bargaining purposes. Strong pro-worker legislation, along with a worker-focused NLRB can help turn the tide for workers.
And in the near term, as threats to workers loom, supporting workers and unions means supporting potential strike actions by nurses, grocery workers, teachers and more, and fighting back when workers’ rights are at risk (as the National Treasury Employees Union is doing). Unions and worker organizing groups are key forces in the fight to create solidarity and maintain our communities and institutions–and now is a critical time to bolster these essential organizations.
