Passport Statistics: Documents in Circulation
Published September 15, 2026 · StatsGalore
Valid passports in circulation in fiscal year 2025 [1]
The U.S. Department of State listed 183,170,240 valid passports in circulation for fiscal year 2025. That is a document count. Passport books and cards can belong to the same person, so dividing the total by population would not establish the share of Americans with a passport. [1]
The numbers
| Fiscal year | Valid passports in circulation | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 145,028,408 | [1] |
| 2022 | 151,814,305 | [1] |
| 2023 | 160,668,889 | [1] |
| 2024 | 169,915,821 | [1] |
| 2025 | 183,170,240 | [1] |
Documents and holders are different units
An individual can hold a passport book and a passport card. Counting documents therefore answers a different question from counting unique holders. The distinction is essential when interpreting a large national total.
The table also does not show who actually traveled abroad. A valid document can remain unused during the reporting year.
[1]Circulation differs from annual issuance
Valid documents in circulation form a stock at a point in the reporting framework. Issuance counts documents produced during a period. New documents, renewals, and expirations affect these measures differently.
For fiscal year 2025, State reported 27,348,416 passports issued, including 4,544,022 passport cards. That issuance figure should not be added directly to the circulation total.
[1]Use fiscal years consistently
The table is organized by fiscal year. It should not be silently relabeled as calendar-year travel activity. When combining these data with other sources, first check that the periods actually align.
Similarly, a document issuance series is not a count of applications received. Processing and application timing can place related events in different reporting periods.
[1]What the upward series establishes
Each displayed circulation total exceeds the previous displayed total. This shows growth in valid documents over the interval. It does not isolate the reasons for that growth or predict international travel demand.
For questions about travel behavior, pair clearly defined passport information with a survey or traffic series that actually measures trips. Preserve the unit and date of each source.
[1]Sources & notes
U.S. Department of State passport statistics. Fiscal-year figures include passport books and cards; they are document counts, not deduplicated holders or ownership percentages.
Source review: 2026-09-15. Article publication and underlying data dates are separate. How we use statistics · Suggest a correction