How Many People Drive in the U.S.? 2026

Licensed drivers over time

The number of licensed drivers in the U.S. steadily increased for decades until 2012, when it decreased year-over-year for the first time in 60 years. In the 1950s, the number of licensed drivers increased by 3.6% on average each year, the highest annual growth rate ever. By the 1970s, this rate dropped to 2.8%.

During the 2000s, the growth rate of licensed drivers continued to slow. By the early 2010s, it was down to 0.8%. The total number of licensed American drivers finally dropped by about 60,000 people in 2012. The number has since grown steadily each year, with the only exception being 2020, when COVID-19 briefly reversed the growth trend, as numbers fell .2% from 2019 to 2020. Recovering from the decline after the pandemic, the total number of drivers increased to 237,656 in 2023.

Driver demographics

The most common driver profile in the U.S. is a male between the ages of 30 and 34 who resides in California.

Age

In 2023, about 1.1 million 16-year-olds — around 25% of the 16-year-old population in the U.S. — were licensed drivers. The number of licensed teenage drivers has dropped from 64% in 1995 to less than 40% in 2021. There are several potential reasons for this, including the price of cars and gas and the increasing availability of ride-hailing options like Uber.

Driver’s licenses are more common among Americans aged 30 to 34, who make up the largest age group of licensed drivers. Nearly 21 million people in this age cohort are licensed to drive, which is about 90% of Americans in that age range.

But Americans ages 65 to 69 boast the highest percentage of drivers (93%) among any age group. However, senior citizens ages 65 and older only made up about 7% of licensed drivers in 2023. That’s higher than their share of the total U.S. population, which is approximately 17%. The share of seniors on the road may increase even more in the near future, though, as they are expected to make up a greater and greater percentage of the U.S. population as a whole.

Gender

The U.S. Department of Transportation estimates that in 2023, about 50.5% of licensed American drivers were female and 49.5% were male.

Those figures are complicated, however, by the fact that, as of May 2022, the below 21 states (and Washington, D.C.) allowed drivers to indicate a nonbinary identity on their driver’s licenses.

1. Arkansas
2. California
3. Colorado
4. Connecticut
5. Hawaii
6. Maine
7. Maryland
8. Massachusetts
9. Michigan
10. Minnesota
11. Nevada
12. New Hampshire
13. New Jersey
14. New Mexico
15. New York
16. Oregon
17. Pennsylvania
18. Rhode Island
19. Vermont
20. Virginia
21. Washington, D.C.
22. Washington state

Location

California had 27,742,348 licensed drivers as of 2023, the largest number of licensed drivers among any U.S. state. Wyoming had only 441,195 licensed drivers, the smallest number. These findings correspond to the states’ populations: California has the largest population of any state in the U.S. in 2023 at 39.2 million people; Wyoming has the smallest, with about 579,761 residents in the same year.

That said, about 76% of Wyomingites are licensed to drive, compared to only 71% of Californians.

The influence of ride-hailing

The popularity of ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft increased substantially between 2017 and 2019. It consequently took a deep dive during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic and began to rise again after mid-2020.

It is anticipated that the U.S. ride-hailing industry will be worth $54.4 billion in 2027.

Uber

Uber is the world’s largest ride-hailing company, and its recovery from the pandemic has been quite brisk, as sales reached pre-pandemic levels in April 2022. Uber provided 6.3 billion rides worldwide in the first two quarters of 2025, a little over half of the 11.3 billion rides that the company provided annually in 2024.

As of 2025, the vast majority (82%) of Uber users are under the age of 45, with only a very small percentage of older adults using the service. The popularity of Uber and other ride-hailing services among young people may have contributed to the decline in teenagers who hold a driver’s license.

On the other hand, Uber reported that it worked with 8.8 million drivers worldwide in the second quarter of 2025. The jobs that ride-hailing services provide  may encourage some sectors of the U.S. population to obtain driver’s licenses.

Lyft

Lyft is another top ride-hailing provider. The company had 24.7 million active riders in the fourth quarter of 2024, which was a 32% increase over 2021. This is particularly impressive because, unlike Uber, Lyft provides services only in the U.S. and Canada.

Lyft hasn’t, however, reached its pre-pandemic sales levels, indicating that it is losing ground to Uber. This may be, in part, because Uber has been more proactive in providing other services, such as food delivery.

Although Lyft hasn’t disclosed the number of drivers who use its app, various sources estimate its fleet of drivers to be over 2 million.

Commercial drivers

As of 2024, around 3.6 million Americans hold commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) and are employed in the trucking industry. CDL holders tend to skew older, and commercial drivers under age 35 are underrepresented relative to other members of the U.S. labor force.

The gender disparity among commercial drivers is even more pronounced, as in 2023, only 16.4% were women. Within the commercial driving industry, men are more likely to drive trucks, while women are more likely to hold school bus driver positions.