Union membership drops in Missouri, rises in Kansas in 2020

In 2020, union members accounted for 9.4 percent of wage and salary workers in Missouri, compared with 11.1 percent in 2019, according to a report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

While Missouri experienced a drop, Kansas saw a slight rise, moving from 8.7 in 2019 to 8.9 in 2020.

Missouri’s union membership rate was at its peak in 1989, when it averaged 15.5 percent and at its low point in 2014, at 8.4 percent. Nationwide, union members accounted for 10.8 percent of employed wage and salary workers in 2020, up by 0.5 percentage point from 2019.

Since 1989, when comparable state data became available, the union membership rate in Missouri has been higher than the U.S. rate on six occasions, most recently in 2019.

Nationwide, 14.3 million wage and salary workers were union members in 2020 and 1.7 million wage and salary workers were not affiliated with a union but had jobs covered by a union contract. The number of wage and salary workers belonging to unions (14.3 million) was down by 321,000, or 2.2 percent, from 2019.

However, the decline in total wage and salary employment was 9.6 million (mostly among nonunion workers), or 6.7 percent. The disproportionately large decline in total wage and salary employment compared with the decline in the number of union members led to an increase in the union membership rate.