Traveling is probably one of the best ways to “learn by experience.” And sure, as people who live in a large country like the United States, there’s plenty of travel one can do without a passport. But if you travel outside our country, there’s just so much more opportunity to learn about people, places, and things that are nothing like the good ol’ U.S. of A.
You may recall that after COVID settled down, there was a large uptick of passport applications. Some of it was a backlog of renewals that didn’t get processed during the pandemic, but much of it was new applications, mainly due to what was coined as “revenge travel.”
It’s been a few years, and student travel company Rustic Pathways crunched the numbers from the Bureau of Consular Affairs to rank U.S. states by the percentage of residents who hold a valid U.S. passport.
Key takeaways
- As of the most recent data available, there are just under 170 million valid U.S. passports in circulation (that includes both passport books (84.76% of passport holders) and passport cards (15.24%) – so one person could actually hold two documents that are both considered “passports.”)
- Less than half of Americans have a passport. Between 45% and 50% of Americans currently hold a valid passport.
- The number of new passports issued dropped 5.28% in 2024 after a record-setting “revenge travel” year of 2023.
SPOILERS: Residents in the South and the Midwest are the least likely to have a passport. But here are the numbers…
The 10 states with the most passport holders
- California – 2,836,428
- Texas – 1,843,673
- New York – 1,455,210
- Florida – 1,534,682
- New Jersey – 768,344
- Illinois – 753,679
- Pennsylvania – 709,627
- Virginia – 586,507
- Georgia – 604,760
- Massachusetts – 542,913
The 10 states with the fewest passport holders
- Wyoming – 28,510
- Vermont – 40,059
- North Dakota – 42,295
- South Dakota – 42,893
- West Virginia – 48,191
- Alaska – 47,045
- Delaware – 61,452
- Montana – 62,399
- Rhode Island – 75,227
- Mississippi – 85,811
But what about population comparison?
Of course, the first thing you might consider is that California is going to have a lot of passport holders – it has 39,663,800 residents, while Wyoming only has 590,169. So, of COURSE, California will naturally have more passport holders. California, Texas, and New York are also major travel hubs, with more international travelers, which results in a higher number of people holding passports. Plus, of course, once you include state populations, you also have to consider how many residents of each state are U.S. passport holders vs. non-citizen residents who hold passports from other countries.
But overall, when it comes to how many in each state hold U.S. passports…now we know.
Rustic Pathways also included some fun facts about how the number of passport holders has waxed and waned over the years, how COVID affected passport issuance, and, of course, the other 30 states and how they ranked in terms of U.S. passport holders. You can check out all that information on this page of their website.
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
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