The number of wage and salary workers represented by unions in the manufacturing sector of the U.S. economy fell by 19,000 last year to 2.017 million, the U.S. Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this month. However, the percentage of manufacturing employees represented by unions actually increased by one-tenth of a percent to 13% in 2005 because the number of people working in manufacturing decreased by a larger number than did union membership. There were 15.518 million people employed in U.S. manufacturing in 2005.
For the entire U.S. economy, 12.5% of wage and salary workers were union members in 2005, a percentage unchanged from 2004. In 2005, some 15.685 million workers of the 125.889 million employed were union members.
