Trade Union Membership 2008

This report contains estimates of the rate of trade union membership in Great Britain, the UK and regions from the fourth quarter 2008 Labour Force Survey (LFS), both for employees and for all in employment. Greater focus is made of the union density rates of employees – paid wage and salary earners – than to all those in employment.

The density of trade union membership is defined as the proportion of the population in question who are union members, based upon those answering yes to the question on trade union membership in the Labour Force Survey.

Among the English government office regions in 2008, the North East continued to have the highest union density (35.3 per cent) and the South East had the lowest union density (21.5 per cent), however the South East union density increased by 0.5 percentage points from 2007.

Questions about trade union membership are only asked once a year, in the fourth quarter of the LFS, therefore statistics published in this report come from the fourth quarter (Q4) each year unless otherwise specified.

As with previous years’ Trade Union Membership publications, the focus is on trade union densities rather than membership levels. Membership levels are omitted from the majority of the main tables due to issues concerning nonresponse in the LFS. However, estimates of union membership levels for the UK, and the regions, can this year be found in a small number of tables. The levels presented have been slightly revised, as a result of an improvement to the methodology (see annex B), from the estimates found in table B1 of the previous trade union membership publication.

Dated 29/04/2009

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Owning Organisation

BERR - http://www.berr.gov.uk/

Data Type

Research Report

Lowest Geographical Level

NUTS 2 (Government Office Region)

Theme

Society, Labour Market & Skills