Public employee union membership rises — and so do pension burdens

From Capitol Report New Mexico - With all the talk about the standoff in Wisconsin, the issue of public employee unions has taken center stage. I knew that union enrollments in the private sector have been going down in the past 30 years and that union enrollment in public employees unions have been going up, but I was surprised to see that the actual number of union members in the public sector exceeded the total number of private sector union members. One might explain that, with outsourcing and cost-cutting, private sector unions are taking a hit. But that doesn’t explain why public sector union enrollment has increased by 1.9 million since 1985 while private union enrollment has decreased by 4.2 million over the same period. On a related note, the growth of public employees means state governments have a larger burden to bear when it comes to paying for the retirement plans of state employees. We’ve written about those concerns here and here. In addition, the Rio Grande Foundation posted a chart, showing that while Ohio and Wisconsin are ranked 1-2 in pension liabilities, good old New Mexico is No. 3 in the nation, with estimated pension liabilities at a whopping 59.8 percent of GDP: Read more News New Mexico

Public employee union membership rises — and so do pension burdens