In January, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its annual report on union membership, which shows that Washington remains the 4th most highly unionized state in the nation. In 2010, 19.4 percent of Washington workers were members of a union. This is down from the 20.2 percent reported for 2009. Nationally, 11.9 percent of workers were union members.

The BLS report is available here.

Professors Barry Hirsch (Georgia State University) and David Macpherson (Trinity University) provide estimates of public and private sector by state, based on the same data source used by the BLS (the Current Population Survey).Hirsch and Macphearson estimate that in 2010 union members held 56.8 percent of Washington’s public sector jobs, compared to 10.7 percent of private sector jobs. In both sectors, Washington ranked 7th highest.

The Hirsch and Macpherson estimates are available on the Unionstats.com website. Note that because of small sample sizes, the separate estimates of public and private sector unionization rates are less precise that the estimates of overall unionization rates.