Construction unions experienced an uptick in union density in 2007 that outpaced the rest of organized labor.

According to figures released Jan. 25 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), U.S. construction union membership rose from 8.4 million in 2006 to 8.6 million in 2007. That's an increase of about 2.4 percent, but with heavy job losses in the primarily nonunion residential section, that translates into building trades union members having 13.9 percent market penetration in 2007, compared to 13.0 percent in 2006.

In 1983 - the last year comparable data is available - union market share in construction was 29.4 percent. That number has declined virtually every year since.

As we reported in our last edition, all of organized labor in the U.S. enjoyed a rare increase in density from 12.0 percent in 2006 to 12.1 percent in 2007. In three out of the last four years, U.S. union membership has been flat or has increased slightly - giving organized labor hope that the decades-long slide in union membership might be bottoming out.

"For the first time in the past quarter of a century, in 2007 U.S. unions increased their share of membership among workers," said Ben Zipperer and John Schmitt of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "The increase is small, and may well reflect statistical variation rather than an actual increase in the union membership share, but the uptick is striking because it is the first time since the BLS began collecting annual union membership rates in 1983 that the union share has increased.

"The small national rise in union membership rates reflected a large increase in union membership in California, partially offset by substantial declines in the Midwest."

Zipperer and Schmitt said Midwestern states historically have had a higher unionization rate than states in the West. But, for the first time since 1983, the unionization rate in the West (14.7 percent) exceeded the unionization rate in the Midwest (13.8 percent). In all industries, Michigan's union density dropped by 2.6 percent from 2006 to 2007 with the loss of 869,000 union members.