Union Membership, Percent of Public Sector Employees, 2023
This figure is a thematic map of the United States that shows the share of public sector employees who were union members in each state in 2022. States in darker blue have higher shares, while states in lighter shades have smaller shares. New York had the highest public sector union membership rate at 65.9 percent, followed by Rhode Island at 61 percent and then Connecticut at 58.2 percent. South Carolina had the lowest union membership rate in the public sector at 3.8 percent, and substantially lagged even the state with the next lowest rate (Arkansas at 8.1 percent). There are nine states in which the majority of public sector employees were union members in 2022: New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Oregon, California, Hawaii, and Pennsylvania. By contrast, in thirty states, less than a third of public sector workers were union members, and in four states, less than 10 percent of public sector workers were union members. All four of these states are in the south; they include Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and South Carolina.