Bank branches fell 23% since 2009. The deposits inside them nearly tripled.
Summary
The FDIC counted 76,120 FDIC-insured banking offices as of June 30, 2025, down from a peak of 99,550 in 2009. Over the same stretch the deposits booked at those offices grew from $7.6 trillion to $18.1 trillion, and the tellers who once staffed the counters fell by more than a third, from 545,300 in 2012 to 347,400 in 2024, with federal forecasters projecting another 13 percent decline by 2034.
The shrinking network
The FDIC's Summary of Deposits — the mandatory annual survey of every physical bank office in the country — counted 99,550 offices nationwide as of June 30, 2009, the peak of the series. By June 30, 2025 that had fallen to 76,120, a decline of 23,430 offices, or 23.5 percent. The decline has been steady rather than sudden: down to 96,340 by 2013, 89,849 by 2017, 81,791 by 2021, and 76,120 by 2025 — no single year of collapse, just a network that has gotten smaller every year for a decade and a half.
View data as table
| 2009 | 99,550 | peak of the series |
|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 96,340 | |
| 2017 | 89,849 | |
| 2021 | 81,791 | |
| 2025 | 76,120 | -23.5% from the 2009 peak |
More money, fewer doors
The offices that remain aren't handling less. Summing the same Summary of Deposits filing's deposit field across every office nationwide shows total deposits climbing from $7.56 trillion in 2009 to $18.09 trillion in 2025 — up 139 percent. Divide the two series against each other and the shift is stark: the average banking office held about $75.9 million in deposits in 2009. By 2025 that average had risen to $237.7 million — each remaining office now carries about 3.1 times the deposit load it carried sixteen years earlier.
View data as table
| 2009 | $7.56T | |
|---|---|---|
| 2013 | $9.43T | |
| 2017 | $11.83T | |
| 2021 | $17.20T | |
| 2025 | $18.09T | +139% since 2009 |
Where the tellers went
The people who staffed those offices declined faster than the offices themselves. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Outlook Handbook put U.S. teller employment at 545,300 in 2012 and 502,700 in 2016 — figures drawn from 's own Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey, published in each year's edition of the same handbook entry. By 2024, the count had fallen to 347,400, a 36 percent drop from 2012, even as the number of banking offices fell by only about a fifth over the same stretch. 's current edition projects the occupation will keep shrinking: -44,900 more jobs by 2034, a further 13 percent decline, driven explicitly by "the number of bank branches... in decline due to technological change" and video kiosks that let one teller serve customers at multiple locations remotely. The agency still expects about 29,800 openings a year on average through 2034 — nearly all of them replacing tellers who leave the occupation, not net new hiring.
View data as table
| 2012 | 545,300 | |
|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 502,700 | |
| 2024 | 347,400 | -36% since 2012 |
| 2034 (projected) | 302,500 | BLS projection, -13% from 2024 |
The takeaway
- The network is a fifth of the size it was, and still shrinking. 76,120 banking offices remain as of the 's June 2025 survey, down 23.5 percent from the 2009 peak of 99,550 — a loss of 23,430 physical locations in sixteen years.
- The money didn't leave with the branches. Deposits booked at the remaining offices grew 139 percent over the same period, to $18.09 trillion — the average office now carries about 3.1 times the deposit load it carried in 2009.
- The labor force shrank faster than the real estate. Teller employment fell 36 percent from 2012 to 2024, and projects another 13 percent decline by 2034 — the sharpest contraction of any of the three series here.
All banking-office and deposit figures are Summary of Deposits counts as of June 30 of the stated year; teller employment figures are Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics counts as published in each year's Occupational Outlook Handbook edition, with the 2034 figure a projection, not an observed count.
Sources
- BankFind Suite, Summary of Deposits — the mandatory annual survey of every -insured institution's physical office locations and the deposits booked at each one; source for all banking-office counts and deposit totals, queried live for 2009, 2013, 2017, 2021, and 2025. banks.data.fdic.gov/api/sod
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook — Tellers (SOC 43-3071), current edition — source for 2024 employment, median pay, and the 2024-34 job outlook and projected employment change. bls.gov/ooh/office-and-administrative-support/tellers.htm
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook — Tellers, 2014-15 edition — source for the 2012 employment figure, accessed via the Internet Archive after the live page returned an access error on this network. web.archive.org
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook — Tellers, 2018-19 edition — source for the 2016 employment figure, accessed via the Internet Archive for the same reason. web.archive.org
Comments
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Every -insured bank must file a Summary of Deposits each June 30, listing every physical office it operates and the deposits booked there. Sixteen years of that filing show the same institution reshaping itself: fewer doors, more money behind each one, and fewer people standing at the counter.