Membership in mass organizations has kept falling despite rising union support

Evidence

Despite its shortcomings, Putnam’s book has stood the test of time—its central insight remains valid. Midway through the 2020s, membership in secular organizations continues to decline. In Germany, for instance, the main trade union federation represented nearly 12 million workers in 1991; thirty years later, that figure had shriveled to just 5.7 million. Although public support for unions has risen in the United States, the unionization rate reached a historic low of 10.1 percent in 2021, following a brief uptick during the pandemic. In the early 1980s it still hovered around 20 percent—a sign that the renewed organizing efforts of the 2010s have not kept pace with the growth of the labor force. — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 101

Categorization

• XREF: These numbers anchor the reader’s hollowed-out-institutions diagnosis: German union membership halved (12m to 5.7m) and US unionization hit 10.1 percent in 2021.
• QUESTION: Public union support rising while unionization falls suggests preference is not the constraint — worth checking whether this decoupling recurs across other mass institutions.