Labor Unions Under Neoliberalism: Part III
Union Density by Race 2000-2024
Accessing the Data
I produced the below visualization using the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (2015) Data Retrieval: Labor Force Statistics (CPS) page. After selecting “Table 1. Union affiliation of employed wage and salary workers by selected characteristics,” scroll down to the “Race” section. Next, select the tick boxes in the third column, “Members of Unions: Percent of employed,” according to the corresponding racial groups (White, Black, Latino, and Asian). Make sure you do not choose the individual sexes of each race. Once you select “Retrieve data,” proceed to change the date range from 2014-2024 to 2000-2024. At last, you can compare the union density data for race with those in the chart.
Visualization
Discussion
Before I state the main idea behind the visualization, it is important to understand its interactive features. If you hover over each line’s data points, you will see the matching year and union density. Clicking on one of the races in the legend allows you to isolate one or multiple lines. Also, you can expand or contract the x and y-axis according to your needs.
Immediately, the viewer of this line graph will determine that union density has fallen for all racial groups in the US. Yet, density rates have fallen much faster for certain groups than others. For example, Black workers experienced a 5.4% decline in union density while their Latino or Hispanic counterparts faced a 2.6% reduction. Despite such a hefty drop in union member density, Black Americans still had the highest metric out of all racial groups. On a more nuanced level, Asian and Latino American union density rates were the same in 2008, 2013, and 2024. Those data points are part of a broader trend throughout the period, where both groups’ density rates were so similar that they were within 1% of each other 20 out of the 25 years.
Works Cited
Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2015, September 16). Table 1. Union affiliation of employed wage and salary workers by selected characteristics. https://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpslutab1.htm