People moving to nonunionized states?
Last Tuesday (March 31) there was an “Employee Free Choice Act” forum which was broadcast on PCN earlier today. A lot of claims were made that probably couldn’t be statistically looked at, but at least one was easy: the claim that people are moving out of states with lots of union jobs into states without them. Below is a list, combining US census population change between 2007 and 2008 with BLS numbers on percent of union-represented employees.
The 15 states with the smallest population increases (actually decreases for Michigan and Rhode Island) compared with the ranking in percent of union jobs:
| .Michigan | 5 |
| .Rhode Island | 12 |
| .Ohio | 17 |
| .Maine | 22 |
| .Vermont | 28 |
| .Pennsylvania | 15 |
| .West Virginia | 18 |
| .Maryland | 20 |
| .New Hampshire | 27 |
| .New York | 1 |
| .Connecticut | 8 |
| .New Jersey | 7 |
| .Massachusetts | 14 |
| .Wisconsin | 16 |
| .North Dakota | 40 |
Seven of these with the smallest population increase are also within the top 15 with unionized jobs.
The 15 states with the highest population increases compared with their unionized job rankings:
| .Utah | 42 |
| .Arizona | 30 |
| .Texas | 47 |
| .North Carolina | 51 |
| .Colorado | 33 |
| .Idaho | 36 |
| .Wyoming | 34 |
| .Nevada | 9 |
| .Georgia | 50 |
| .South Carolina | 49 |
| .Washington | 4 |
| .Oregon | 11 |
| .Delaware | 19 |
| .Montana | 24 |
| .Tennessee | 43 |
Likewise, seven of these states are within the 15 states with the least percent of unionized jobs. (There are 51 since DC is included.)
New York has the most unionized jobs at 24.9%, while North Carolina is last with only 3.5%.