Union Membership Grows in 2008. When People Can Join Unions, They Do
For the second year in a row, the percentage of workers who belong to a union grew, according to the annual survey of union membership released this morning by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
In 2008, union membership grew by 428,000, increasing the percentage of union members in the workforce to 12.4 percent, up from 12.1 percent in 2007. Overall, 16.1 million workers carry union cards.
Union membership, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says, is especially valuable to working families as the nation’s economy is in the worst recession in decades.
New Report: 30 Million Service Jobs May Be Shipped Overseas
Recent telecommunications advances, especially the Internet, could theoretically put more than 30 million U.S. jobs at risk of being exported overseas. Services previously needed to be performed domestically theoretically can be done anywhere in the world through the Internet, four U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) analysts say in an article appearing in the agency’s Monthly Labor Review (subscription required).
The 160 occupations considered capable of being performed in other countries account for some 30.3 million workers, one-fifth of total U.S. employment and cover a wide array of job functions, pay rates and educational levels.
Bleeding Jobs: U.S. Loses 533,000 Jobs in November
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The United States is bleeding jobs: Today’s unemployment figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show a mind-numbing 533,000 jobs lost in November, the largest monthly jobs loss in 34 years. The already bad 6.5 percent unemployment rate worsened to 6.7 percent, and some 1.9 million workers have lost their jobs this year.
The number of workers who have lost their jobs in November is far larger than the 300,000 predicted by many economists, and doesn’t reflect drastic layoff plans announced by major corporations in recent days.
Yesterday, AT&T Inc., DuPont Co., Viacom Inc., Credit Suisse Group and Avis Budget Group announced job cuts that total 22,850, and earlier this week, financial firms such as The Carlyle Group said they’d cut a total of 3,000 jobs.
As bad as the November job loss numbers are, the unemployment situation is far worse than the latest figures show. First, many of the jobs lost aren’t coming back. According to the BLS:
Among the unemployed, the number of persons who lost their jobs and did not expect to be recalled to work increased by 298,000 to 4.7 million in November.
