America is down to 12,870 court reporters and captioners on payrolls, a 27.2% drop in a decade, one for every 26,557 Americans. In 10 states plus Washington DC, the occupation is now so sparse that BLS cannot publish a headcount at all. The best-covered state, Indiana, has 18.3x more court reporters per capita than the worst, Massachusetts. Hover any state for its numbers.
Payroll court reporters and simultaneous captioners (BLS OEWS, May 2025) per 100,000 residents. Rank 1 = fewest per capita = running out first. Hover or tap a state for details.
The hatched states are the story: in 10 states plus DC, so few court reporters remain on payrolls that BLS cannot publish a count at all under its confidentiality and quality rules. Suppression does not mean zero reporters, but it marks the deepest end of the shortage.
The best-covered state has 18.3 times more court reporters per capita than the worst.
National payroll employment, court reporters and simultaneous captioners (BLS OEWS national files). The mean annual wage rose 43.9% over the same decade, from $54,720 to $78,760, and the workforce still shrank by 4,800 jobs. That wage figure is nominal: cumulative inflation over the same period was 35.93%, so real pay growth was roughly 6%, about 0.6% a year.
The steep fall happened between 2015 and 2021; the count has been roughly flat since (+1.9% from 2024 to 2025). The shortage persists because retirements and demand keep outpacing the training pipeline, not because the number is still plunging every year. Context: more than 70% of state court survey respondents reported staffing shortages in the last year and 61% expect them to continue (National Center for State Courts, citing the Thomson Reuters Institute 2025 state courts survey).
California's own judiciary reports that most family law, probate, and unlimited civil hearings now proceed with no verbatim record at all (April 1, 2023 through March 31, 2026). Source: Judicial Branch of California.
Hiring is not closing the gap: California courts hired 381.8 full-time-equivalent reporters between January 2023 and March 2026 and netted a gain of just 15.5 FTE after departures.
Rank 1 = fewest payroll court reporters per 100,000 residents (May 2025). "n/a" means BLS did not publish that figure. Click a column to sort; click a state for its panel.
| Rank | State | On payroll (2025) | Per 100k | 10-yr change | Mean wage |
|---|
No published 2025 count (11 jurisdictions). BLS suppressed the May 2025 court reporter headcount in these states: too few on payrolls to meet publication standards. Suppression is not zero, but it marks the deepest end of the shortage. Maryland's wage is published ($61,460 mean) while its headcount is not; Maryland's May 2024 estimate was 110.
Analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2015 and May 2025) for the occupation Court Reporters and Simultaneous Captioners, with per-capita rates computed from U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2025 state population estimates. Analysis by Ditto Transcripts. All datasets were pulled on August 5, 2026.
Occupation definition: SOC 27-3092, Court Reporters and Simultaneous Captioners (2018 SOC), for May 2020 through May 2025, and SOC 23-2091, Court Reporters (2010 SOC), for May 2015. The 2018 SOC revision renamed and recoded the same occupation; the BLS crosswalk maps the two codes one to one. The occupation includes simultaneous captioners (broadcast and CART captioning) as well as courtroom stenographers.
Computation: state payroll employment (OEWS TOT_EMP, May 2025) divided by the Census Bureau July 1, 2025 population estimate (POPESTIMATE2025), times 100,000. Rank 1 = fewest court reporters per 100,000 residents. The ranking universe is the 50 states plus the District of Columbia; Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands are excluded. Ten-year change is computed only where both the May 2015 and May 2025 employment estimates are published (35 states). Wages are OEWS mean annual wages, May 2025.
Caveats: OEWS counts wage-and-salary (payroll) jobs only; self-employed freelance court reporters, a large share of the deposition market, are not counted, so figures describe payroll employment. Where no state estimate appears, BLS suppressed it under confidentiality and quality rules; suppression does not mean zero court reporters. OEWS employment is rounded to the nearest 10, and several small-state estimates carry relative standard errors of 20 to 40 percent, so ten-year changes are more reliable than one-year moves. The national count has been roughly flat since 2021 (+1.9% from 2024 to 2025); the defensible decade figure is the 27.2% decline.
Sources: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2015 and May 2025 state and national files), Census Bureau Vintage 2025 state population estimates, Judicial Branch of California, and the National Center for State Courts.
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