Blood is donated free. Collecting it is now a $2.3 billion business the workforce can't keep pace with.
Summary
The American Red Cross's blood-collection arm took in $2.31 billion in the year through June 2025, up 6.8% — a year the country has already logged two severe national shortages. The workforce that actually draws the blood, the nation's 139,700 phlebotomists, is projected to grow just 6% by 2034, and 97% of its annual job openings come from people leaving the field, not the field expanding.
None of that shortage shows up in the Red Cross's books as a shortage of money. It shows up as a shortage of people.
Two shortages, one growing book of business
Biomedical Services — the division that collects, tests, and sells blood products to about 2,500 hospitals, supplying roughly 40% of the nation's blood — is the Red Cross's largest single revenue line, bigger than disaster relief, training, and international programs combined. Its revenue did not dip in the shortage year. It grew.
View data as table
| FY2024 Biomedical Services revenue | $2.16B | year ended June 30, 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 Biomedical Services revenue | $2.31B | year ended June 30, 2025 — up 6.8% |
The Red Cross's own consolidated financial statements, audited by KPMG, put Biomedical Services revenue at $2.305 billion for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2025 — up 6.8% from $2.159 billion the year before. Hospitals pay for blood products the way they pay for any other purchased good or service: the 2023 National Blood Collection and Utilization Survey, run by AABB for the industry at large, found the median price hospitals paid per unit rose between 2021 and 2023 across red cells, plasma, and platelets, even as the number of units collected nationwide — 11.586 million red-cell units in 2023 — fell 1.7% from two years earlier. Supply tightened; the price per unit did not follow it down.
Where the blood dollar goes
Blood collection is not a capital-heavy business. It is a labor-heavy one — nurses and phlebotomists staffing drives, screening donors, and drawing units, one arm at a time.
View data as table
| Compensation | $1.16B | salaries + benefits, 50.2% of revenue |
|---|---|---|
| Contractual services | $488.7M | 21.2% of revenue |
| Supplies & materials | $335.3M | 14.5% of revenue |
| Other operating | $139.1M | travel, equipment, depreciation, assistance — 6.0% |
| Margin | $185.8M | revenue less program expense, 8.1% |
Compensation — salaries plus employee benefits for the people who run the 34-to-35 local blood-services regions the Red Cross operates — consumed $1.156 billion of the $2.305 billion, just over half. Contractual services and supplies took another 35.7% combined. What was left after covering the direct cost of collecting, testing, and distributing blood: $185.8 million, an 8.1% margin, up from $160.1 million (7.4%) the year before. The money to hire is there. The people to hire are the harder constraint.
The workforce that isn't scaling
Phlebotomists — the technicians trained to draw blood, whether for a hospital lab test or a Red Cross donation van — are a small, slow-growing occupation by the federal government's own count. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Outlook Handbook put total phlebotomist employment at 139,700 in 2024, projected to grow just 6% — 7,900 net new jobs — through 2034. projects about 18,400 openings a year in the field on average over that decade. Almost none of that comes from growth.
View data as table
| Total average annual openings | 18,400 | BLS-published figure, 2024–34 |
|---|---|---|
| From replacement | 17,610 | 97% of annual openings — this piece's calculation |
| From net job growth | 790 | 3% of annual openings — this piece's calculation |
Divide 's ten-year growth projection into an annual average and it comes to roughly 790 net new phlebotomist jobs a year — about 3% of the 18,400 openings the occupation is expected to post annually. The other 97%, roughly 17,610 openings a year, exist only because someone left: retired, changed careers, or exited the labor force. A blood-collection system built on a workforce that mostly needs replacing, not expanding, has limited room to absorb a bad flu season or a summer travel spike — which is exactly what happened twice in the first half of 2026.
The takeaway
- The money grew through the shortage, not despite it. Red Cross Biomedical Services revenue rose 6.8% to $2.31 billion in FY2025, the same period national blood collection volumes were falling and hospital prices per unit were rising, per AABB's 2023 national survey.
- Half of every revenue dollar pays people, and the people aren't the bottleneck-free part of the system. Compensation is 50.2% of Biomedical Services revenue — the largest single cost by far — in an occupation projects will add jobs at less than 1% a year on average.
- The shortages are a labor-supply story more than a money story. Two severe national shortages in six months came from donor and drive disruptions — flu, winter storms, summer travel — not from the Red Cross running short of funds to run its network.
Financial figures are for the Red Cross's Biomedical Services division on a fiscal-year basis (July 1–June 30) from audited consolidated statements; national blood-collection volumes are from AABB's 2023 survey, the most recent full national accounting available; phlebotomist figures are national totals and do not isolate blood-donation-center employment from hospital and lab phlebotomists. The growth/replacement split of 's annual openings figure is this piece's own arithmetic on 's published decade totals, not a number itself publishes.
Sources
- The American National Red Cross, Consolidated Financial Statements, year ended June 30, 2025 (KPMG LLP, audited) — Biomedical Services revenue ($2.305B, FY2025), program expense ($2.119B), functional-expense breakdown (compensation, contractual services, supplies, other operating), and the FY2025 margin. redcross.org
- The American National Red Cross, Consolidated Financial Statements, year ended June 30, 2024 (KPMG LLP, audited) — FY2024 Biomedical Services revenue ($2.159B) and program expense, used as the year-over-year comparison. redcross.org
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook — Phlebotomists (2024 employment data, 2024–34 projections: 139,700 jobs, 6% growth, 7,900 net new jobs, ~18,400 average annual openings). Direct bls.gov access was blocked to automated requests during research; verified via a June 13, 2026 Wayback Machine snapshot matching 's published figures. web.archive.org
- American Red Cross, "Red Cross Declares Severe Shortage after Blood Supply Falls 35% in Past Month," press release, January 20, 2026 — the January 2026 shortage declaration, the 35% supply drop, and the ~400 winter-weather-disrupted blood drives. redcross.org
- Live 5 News (WCSC Charleston), "Lowcountry American Red Cross warns of blood supply shortage during 'trauma season,'" June 30, 2026 — the second, mid-2026 "trauma season" shortage and the ~20% supply drop reported by the Red Cross's Lowcountry chapter director. live5news.com
- AABB, "Results of 2023 NBCUS Suggest Continued Stabilization of the Blood Supply," March 17, 2025, summarizing the 2023 National Blood Collection and Utilization Survey — national red-cell collection volume (11.586 million units, 2023, down 1.7% from 2021) and rising hospital prices paid per unit, 2021–2023. aabb.org
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No one is paid to give blood. The system that turns a donated pint into a hospital-ready unit, though, is a business — and in 2026 it has been running two shortages at once: a winter one and a summer one. On January 20, 2026, the American Red Cross declared a severe shortage after the national blood supply fell about 35% in a month, as flu season and roughly 400 winter-weather-disrupted blood drives — more than three times the number affected the same time the year before — kept donors home. By late June, the Red Cross was warning of a second shortage for "trauma season," the Memorial Day–to–Labor Day stretch when car crashes, ATV accidents, and other summer injuries drive up transfusion demand just as scheduled donations drop with school breaks and vacations — Red Cross data cited in that report put the national supply down 20% in the weeks before.