EUGENE (AP) — The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics says the percentage of Oregon workers who belong to a union rose to 17 percent last year from 16.6 percent in 2008.

However, the total number of union workers declined from 259,000 in 2008 to 250,000 last year.

The bureau's David Kong told The Register-Guard newspaper that industries not heavily unionized have lost more jobs than the public sector, which tends to be heavily unionized.

For example, public sector jobs declined by about 1 percent in 2009 while manufacturing jobs declined 11.6 percent and jobs in logging and mining plunged 21 percent.

Union members accounted for 12.3 percent of the work force nationally, essentially unchanged from 2008.