Perhaps it's because unions make workers stronger that some people like to demonize labor unions as "Big Labor." Andrew Breitbart's website Big Government, for example, has a whole section devoted to it. But just how large is the labor movement in the United States? In 2009, out of all wage-earning and salaried workers:
12.3 percent belonged to unions
Union membership is fairly low, in both relative and historical terms. In 1983, the earliest year for which the Bureau of Labor Statistics has comparable data, 20.1 percent of workers belonged to unions.