Independent New Hampshire Journalism · Northfield, NH

New Hampshire Had New England’s Lowest Union Membership Rate Two Years Running. Here Is the 14-Year Federal Record, and Its Limits.

Federal survey estimates put New Hampshire’s union membership rate at 9.2 percent for 2024 and 8.9 percent for 2025, below every other New England state both years. The same agency warns that its 2025 state figures rest on fewer observations than usual, and the series has swung sharply in neighboring states.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that 60,000 of New Hampshire’s 676,000 employed wage and salary workers belonged to a union in 2025. That is 8.9 percent, or about one worker in 11. Another 7,000 workers were covered by a union contract without being members, bringing the share represented by a union to 9.9 percent.

In both years covered by the bureau’s state table released Feb. 18, 2026, New Hampshire came in last in New England. For 2024 its rate was 9.2 percent. Maine, the next lowest, was at 13.1 percent, and Connecticut, the highest in the region, was at 16.5 percent. For 2025 New Hampshire’s 8.9 percent compared with 11.9 percent in Maine and 16.1 percent in both Connecticut and Rhode Island. The national rate was 9.9 percent for 2024 and 10.0 percent for 2025.

Granite State Report cited the 2024 and 2025 New Hampshire figures in an earlier look at workers outside unions, “Voices from the Margins: Workers Without a Union in New Hampshire.” This explainer sets those two numbers inside the longer federal record and lays out what the survey behind them can and cannot show.

New England, side by side

The bureau’s figures come from the Current Population Survey, a monthly survey of about 60,000 households run by the Census Bureau. The union figures are tabulated from one quarter of that monthly sample and are limited to wage and salary workers, so self-employed people are left out. Members are members of a labor union or a similar employee association. Workers counted as represented include members plus workers who report no union affiliation but whose jobs are covered by a union or employee association contract.

Fourteen years of New Hampshire figures

From 2012 through 2022, the New Hampshire rate stayed between 9.4 percent and 11.3 percent. The high mark in that stretch came in 2017. It fell to 9.3 percent in 2023, 9.2 percent in 2024 and 8.9 percent in 2025, the lowest figure in the 14 years shown in the table on this page. The number of members moved less than the rate did. There were 65,000 in 2012 and 60,000 in 2025, while the number of wage and salary workers grew from 621,000 to 676,000.

The bureau’s New England office has put the longer record in a single sentence. In its release on 2022 data, it said that “the union membership rate for the state was at its peak in 1995, when it averaged 12.6 percent, and at its low point in 1993 at 8.2 percent.” Every figure the bureau has reported since then, through 2025, has fallen between those two marks. The same release said New Hampshire’s 2022 rate, 10.1 percent, matched the national rate exactly.

Why the 2025 figures carry a warning

The federal government shutdown cost the survey a month of data. In its 2026 release, the bureau said, “The Current Population Survey (CPS) for October 2025 was not collected due to the federal government shutdown.” Annual figures for 2025 were built from 11 months instead of 12, and the bureau said they “are not strictly comparable with annual averages for other years.”

The union figures were hit harder. “Because union membership and earnings data are collected from only one quarter of the CPS sample, they are already based on a relatively small number of observations and are even more affected by the lack of October data,” the bureau wrote. “In particular, state union membership estimates for 2025 should be interpreted with caution.” It added that the 2025 state data “only allow for broad characterizations.”

That is why the first chart on this page ranks the states on 2024. The broad characterization holds either year: New Hampshire was the lowest in New England in both.

How much the small-state numbers move

A sample that small can swing from one year to the next, and the neighboring states show it. Maine’s rate was 9.2 percent in both 2022 and 2023, below New Hampshire’s both years, and then 13.1 percent in 2024. Rhode Island went from 16.1 percent in 2022 to 12.3 percent in 2023 and back to 16.1 percent in 2025. New Hampshire’s own figure jumped from 9.4 percent in 2016 to 11.3 percent in 2017, then fell to 10.2 percent in 2018.

None of that changes the direction of New Hampshire’s figures from 2022 to 2025, which fell three years in a row. It does mean a single year’s change of a point or so in a small state is a weak basis for a conclusion, and a ranking that rests on a gap of nearly four points, as New Hampshire’s did in 2024, stands on firmer ground than one that rests on tenths.

What the state figures do not show

The bureau’s state table gives one rate for all wage and salary workers. It does not split New Hampshire’s count between public and private employers. Nationally the gap between the two is wide. The bureau put the 2025 rate at 32.9 percent for public-sector workers and 5.9 percent for private-sector workers.

For public workers in New Hampshire, the ground rules are in state law. RSA chapter 273-A, the Public Employee Labor Relations law, covers the state, its political subdivisions, the judicial branch, the community college system and the university system, among other public bodies. It created a five-member Public Employee Labor Relations Board, appointed by the governor and council. RSA 273-A:3 says it is “the obligation of the public employer and the employee organization certified by the board as the exclusive representative of the bargaining unit to negotiate in good faith,” and that the obligation “shall not compel either party to agree to a proposal or to make a concession.”

The same chapter sets a limit. RSA 273-A:13 opens: “Strikes and other forms of job action by public employees are hereby declared to be unlawful.” It goes on to let a public employer ask the superior court for a temporary restraining order while a case is pending before the board, and to let the court award costs and reasonable legal fees. The section’s source note dates it to 1975.

The national comparison stretches further back than any New Hampshire figure cited here. The bureau’s 2026 release said that in 1983, “the first year for which comparable data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent and there were 17.7 million union members.” For 2025 it reported 14.7 million members and a rate of 10.0 percent.

— Granite State Report

Fact check

Editor’s note. Union figures are drawn from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases based on the Current Population Survey, including the bureau’s New England Information Office release on New Hampshire. The law is drawn from RSA chapter 273-A. Differences, shares and rankings are Granite State Report arithmetic from the bureau’s tables. Nothing in this article is legal advice.

Corrections: Granite State Report corrects verified errors promptly and appends a dated note identifying what changed and when. The corrections policy and the corrections register are public, and correction notes are never removed.