UK: Trade Union Membership 2013

This bulletin presents estimates on the proportion (density) of employees, who are trade union members, and whose pay and conditions are affected by collective agreements. These estimates are also presented by age, gender, ethnicity, income, major occupation, industry, full and part-time employment, sector, nation and region.

Around 6.5 million employees in the UK were trade union members in 2013. The level of overall union members was broadly unchanged from 2012, with a reduction of only 6,000 over the year (a 0.1 per cent decline), but well below the peak of over 13 million in 1979. The numbers of UK employees increased between 2012 and 2013. As a result, the membership rate fell slightly to 25.6 per cent in 2013, from 26 per cent in 2012. This is the lowest rate of trade union membership recorded between 1995 and 2013. Over this period, the proportion of employees who were trade union members in the UK has decreased around 7 percentage points, from 32.4 per cent in 1995.