The Department of Labor recently released its annual report on union membership, which means it’s time to commence the annual rite of examining the numbers. This year’s report showed an increase of 273,000 members from 2021 to 2022, but a decline in union density (the percentage of all workers who are union members) from 10.3 percent to 10.1 percent of total US employment. In historical perspective, the last time union density hovered as low as 10 percent was the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929. The high point of union density was in the 1950s, when approximately a third of all workers were members of a union.

Every year, union activists and reporters analyze the Department of Labor membership data looking for signs of labor’s decline or resurgence. We should parse those numbers. But parsing the financial practices of unions may tell a more complete story about the direction labor is headed.

The strange paradox is that while union membership and density have steadily declined, the financial balance sheet of organized labor has ballooned, according to the latest available data from the Department of Labor. As illustrated in the chart below, since 2000, labor’s net assets (assets minus debt) rose from $11 billion in 2000 to $32 billion in 2021, a 191 percent increase. Over that same period, union membership declined by 2.3 million members, a 14 percent decline. (Financial data for 2022 is not yet available.) A full report on union finances and the methodology is available here.