The share of US passport holders reached 48% of the American population in 2024, up from 5% in 1990, according to State Department figures cited in a January 2026 Congressional Research Service brief. The Bureau of Consular Affairs issued 27.3 million passports in fiscal 2025, a single-year record. More than 183 million valid US passports are now in circulation.
The 27.3 million figure exceeds fiscal 2024’s 24.5 million by nearly 3 million documents. It marks the highest annual issuance on record and continues a tenfold expansion of US passport issuance over three decades.
What the numbers actually count
The 27.3 million total includes both passport books and passport cards. Passport cards accounted for roughly 4.5 million of that figure, driven in part by the REAL ID Act enforcement deadline on May 7, 2025, which prompted Americans without compliant state IDs to seek a federally accepted alternative. The Bureau of Consular Affairs administers 28 passport agencies and centers, with six more announced for Utah, Florida, Kansas, Texas, Ohio and North Carolina.
The State Department’s Online Passport Renewal system launched in March 2025 and processed more than 2 million renewals in its first year. Deputy Assistant Secretary for Passports Matt Pierce told Federal News Network in April that processing times remained at record lows despite the volume.
The 30-year arc
US passport issuance has roughly quintupled since the late 1990s:
- FY1996: 5.5 million passports issued
- FY2006: 12 million
- FY2024: 24.5 million
- FY2025: 27.3 million
The share of Americans holding a passport tracks the same trajectory. In 1990, roughly one in 20 Americans held the document. By 2024 the figure was nearly one in two.
The 9/11-era Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which required passports for land and sea travel to Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean starting in 2007, accelerated the trend. Cheaper international airfare, larger immigrant communities maintaining ties abroad, and rising overseas education and remote work pushed it further.
What passport data does and doesn’t show
Passport issuance measures capacity, not intent. Most US passport holders use the document for tourism, business travel, or visiting family. The Federal Voting Assistance Program estimates 3.3 million US citizens lived abroad in 2024, a figure that has grown but remains a fraction of total passport holders.
What the data does show is structural. For the first time in US history, roughly half the country holds the basic document required to live, work or claim residency abroad. The precondition for emigration, once held by a small minority, is now a majority condition.
When American emigration intent rises in any cohort, the population able to act on it is larger than it was a generation ago, and substantially larger than it was at the start of the century.
What changes with a larger passport-holding population
The practical implications cut several ways. For destination countries, a broader US passport base means a larger pool of potential applicants for residency, retirement, work and citizenship-by-descent programs. For US federal agencies, it means more Americans abroad falling under FBAR, FATCA and Social Security reporting obligations. For overseas voting infrastructure, it means a growing share of the eligible electorate sits outside the country, where 11% turnout in 2024 trailed the domestic rate by nearly seven times.
The 27.3 million figure will likely climb. Pierce told Federal News Network the State Department sees “no decrease in demand.” Six new passport agencies are expected to open before the end of the decade. The denominator of the American emigration story, the share of citizens documentarily prepared to leave, is no longer the constraint it once was.o leave, is no longer the constraint it once was.
