In terms of pay, benefits, and hiring, U.S. unions offer a good news/bad news story. The good news for unions

and their members is that their members earn about 20% more than nonunion workers, even after adjusting

for factors such as years of work experience and education level. The bad news for unions is that the share of

U.S. workers who belong to a labor union has been steadily declining for 50 years, as Figure 14.11 shows.

About one-quarter of all U.S. workers belonged to a union in the mid-1950s, but only 10.3% of U.S. workers are

union members today. If you leave out government workers (which includes teachers in public schools), only

6.1% of the workers employed by private firms now work for a union.

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14.3 • Market Power on the Supply Side of Labor Markets: Unions 337

FIGURE 14.11 Percentage of Wage and Salary Workers Who Are Union Members The share of wage and salary
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