In what has become something of a masochistic ritual, for the last week I have been eagerly awaiting the release of the annual report on union membership in the US, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases every year at the end of January. To my surprise, this year’s report was not as grim as I had expected it to be. In 2011, the share of wage and salary earners who were union members was 11.8%, virtually unchanged from the 2010 rate of 11.9%. The public sector unionization rate actually increased to 37% from 36.2% while the private sector rate remained steady at 6.9%. The share of workers represented by a union (those who report no union affiliation but whose jobs are covered by a union contract) ticked down a notch to 13% from 13.1%.

Considering the layoffs and attacks on collective bargaining rights that occurred in the public sector last year, the news could have been far worse. But for those concerned with reversing the fortunes of a labor movement mired long-term decline, maintenance of the status quo is nothing to be happy about. And when you drill down beneath the headline numbers and consider the situation is more grim than it may appear at first glance.

Because labor markets and labor law regimes vary significantly from state to state, one needs to analyze the state-level data in order to gain a fuller picture of labor union strength. Unsurprisingly, union densities remain highest in the Northeast and along the Pacific coast and lowest in the mountain West and in the states of the old Confederacy. The states with the highest densities account for a radically disproportionate share of union members as a whole. As the BLS notes, “over half of the 14.8 union members in the US lived in just seven states (California, 2.4 million; New York, 1.9 million; Illinois, 0.9 million; Pennsylvania, 0.8 million; Michigan, 0.7 million; and New Jersey and Ohio, 0.6 million each), though these states accounted for only about one-third of wage and salary employment nationally.” Big and growing states like Texas and North Carolina remain largely union-free (5.2% and 2.9%, respectively) while union strength remains concentrated in states with declining or stagnating populations (such as New York) or in places with relatively small numbers of wage and salary earners and unique economic circumstances (like Hawaii and Alaska).