Police employment in the United States
Agencies reporting to the FBI in 2025 employed 782,566 sworn officers and 375,789 civilians, serving a population of 320,508,587. That is 3.6 employees per 1,000 residents, the FBI's own figure. The series runs from 2000, and counts only the agencies that reported in each year.
American Factbook Research
Law enforcement employees at agencies reporting to the FBI
Breaks in comparability
- 2000–2025: Which agencies report changes from year to year. A movement in these counts is a movement in reported staff, and the population the reporting agencies served is published alongside so a per-capita figure divides by the right denominator.
Sworn officers
| Period | sworn officers |
|---|---|
| 2000 | 671,244 |
| 2001 | 659,417 |
| 2002 | 665,555 |
| 2003 | 664,897 |
| 2004 | 675,699 |
| 2005 | 674,437 |
| 2006 | 683,641 |
| 2007 | 699,888 |
| 2008 | 706,927 |
| 2009 | 724,815 |
| 2010 | 705,602 |
| 2011 | 733,166 |
| 2012 | 688,874 |
| 2013 | 643,410 |
| 2014 | 649,777 |
| 2015 | 684,834 |
| 2016 | 663,795 |
| 2017 | 673,220 |
| 2018 | 704,305 |
| 2019 | 712,331 |
| 2020 | 723,563 |
| 2021 | 713,998 |
| 2022 | 752,812 |
| 2023 | 759,084 |
| 2024 | 772,732 |
| 2025 | 782,566 |
Civilian staff
| Period | civilian staff |
|---|---|
| 2000 | 279,432 |
| 2001 | 280,111 |
| 2002 | 291,947 |
| 2003 | 285,348 |
| 2004 | 294,765 |
| 2005 | 295,811 |
| 2006 | 303,719 |
| 2007 | 323,464 |
| 2008 | 314,564 |
| 2009 | 316,591 |
| 2010 | 308,871 |
| 2011 | 309,813 |
| 2012 | 287,674 |
| 2013 | 276,731 |
| 2014 | 275,882 |
| 2015 | 296,224 |
| 2016 | 292,257 |
| 2017 | 287,383 |
| 2018 | 294,405 |
| 2019 | 308,698 |
| 2020 | 314,252 |
| 2021 | 329,161 |
| 2022 | 341,259 |
| 2023 | 350,476 |
| 2024 | 362,971 |
| 2025 | 375,789 |
What this data cannot show
- These are national figures. The FBI serves no state-level police employment data: the state endpoint answers with every field null, so a state figure here would be the national one under a state name.
- Employment counts staff at agencies that reported. A change between years can be a change in which agencies reported rather than in how many officers there are, so the population those agencies served is shown beside every count.
- Officers feloniously killed and officers who died accidentally are counted separately by the FBI and are shown separately here. The collection's own "total officers" field carries the felonious figure alone.
- These are counts of people, and they are small. A change of a few moves a percentage a long way, so no percentage change is shown on them.
- A circumstance category is the reporting agency’s classification, recorded at the time. "Not reported" is frequently the largest category and is shown rather than dropped, because dropping it would make every other share look larger.
- Our employees-per-1,000 is checked against the FBI's own published rate for every year in the series. The largest disagreement is 0.61%, which is the FBI rounding its rate to two decimals.
Related
Sources
- FBI Crime Data Explorer — Police Employment and LEOKA — Federal Bureau of Investigation, Criminal Justice Information Services Division · U.S. Government work, public domain (17 U.S.C. 105) · retrieved September 19, 2026
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