German union membership 


Membership of the eight unions in the DGB, Germany’s dominant union confederation, fell very slightly last year, down from 5,995,437 to 5,974,950. 


The numbers have been dropping steadily since the start of the 1990s, when DGB unions had more than 11 million members. 


However, recently the decline has slowed, and amounted to only 0.3% between 2017 and 2018. 


In three DGB unions, membership increased. They include the largest, IG Metall, whose membership went up by 0.4% from 2,262,661 in 2017 to 2,270,595 in 2018.