Volunteer firefighters donate $46.9 billion a year. Their ranks just hit a record low.
Summary
Volunteer labor that would cost $46.9 billion a year to replace with paid staff keeps most American fire departments running. Federal grants aimed at recruiting and staffing them total $648 million a year — and in 2023 the volunteer ranks fell to the lowest number ever recorded.
The headcount
The National Fire Protection Association has tracked career and volunteer firefighter counts every year since 1986, when the country had 808,200 volunteers. The number climbed through the 1990s to a historic peak of 838,000 in 1995, held roughly steady into the 2000s, then began sliding. By 2023 — the most recent year NFPA has published — the volunteer count had fallen to 635,100, the lowest figure in the 39 years NFPA has been counting, down from 703,600 the year before: a 9.7% drop in a single year. The National Volunteer Fire Council puts the same 2023 figure at 62% of all 1,018,100 career-plus-volunteer firefighters in the country, down from 77% of a similarly sized total force in 1986. Career firefighter ranks, meanwhile, grew from 237,750 to 383,000 over the same 37 years — the paid side of the system expanded while the free side shrank.
View data as table
| 1986 | 808,200 | first tracked year |
|---|---|---|
| 1995 | 838,000 | historic peak |
| 2010 | 768,150 | |
| 2020 | 676,900 | |
| 2023 | 635,100 | record low; 703,600 in 2022 |
The money
Nobody pays volunteer firefighters a wage, but their labor is not free — someone is just not paying for it. The Fire Protection Research Foundation, NFPA's research arm, tried to price it: replacing every all-volunteer department in the country with career staff would cost $46.9 billion a year, in 2014 dollars — 14.3% of the total estimated cost of fire in America that year, and more than the $41.9 billion local governments actually spent running their fire departments. Private citizens chip in too: donations to fire departments totaled $1.3 billion in the same accounting.
Against that, the federal government's dedicated tools for keeping the volunteer system staffed are small and have not grown. 's Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grants — the program built specifically to fund recruitment, retention, and staffing at local fire departments — were appropriated $324 million for FY2024, held flat for the FY2025 continuing resolution, and requested at the same $324 million again for FY2026. The companion Assistance to Firefighters Grants (AFG) program, which funds equipment and training rather than headcount, is funded identically: $324 million, flat, three years running. Combined, the two federal fire-staffing and equipment programs move $648 million a year — about 1.4% of the $46.9 billion the volunteers are estimated to be worth.
View data as table
| Value of volunteers' donated time | $46.9B | 2014 estimate; FPRF |
|---|---|---|
| Local government fire dept. spending | $41.9B | 2014 estimate; FPRF |
| Private donations to fire departments | $1.3B | 2014 estimate; FPRF |
| Federal AFG + SAFER grants combined | $648M | FY2026 request; DHS/FEMA |
The takeaway
- The volunteer force is the fire department for most of the country, and it just posted its worst year on record. 635,100 volunteers in 2023 is the lowest count in the 39 years NFPA has tracked the number — down 9.7% in a single year.
- The dollar figures don't match the dependence. Local governments and private donors lean on $46.9 billion a year of volunteer labor they would otherwise have to buy at career-firefighter wages; the two federal grant programs built to keep that labor pool staffed move $648 million combined — a fraction of even the $1.3 billion in private donations.
- Nothing about the federal response has moved. AFG and SAFER have been funded at the identical $324 million apiece across FY2024 enacted, the FY2025 continuing resolution, and the FY2026 budget request, even as the workforce they exist to support hit a record low.
The $46.9B, $41.9B, and $1.3B figures are 2014 estimates from the Fire Protection Research Foundation's most recent full accounting of the cost of fire; they have not been re-estimated or inflation-adjusted here. Federal grant figures are nominal dollars for FY2024–FY2026 as reported in 's FY2026 budget justification.
Sources
- National Fire Protection Association — "Number of Firefighters in the U.S.," annual data table of career and volunteer firefighter counts, 1986–2023 — the source for the 1986 baseline (808,200), the 1995 peak (838,000), and the 2023 record low (635,100). nfpa.org
- U.S. Fire Administration — National Fire Department Registry Summary, January 2024 — the count of 29,452 total U.S. fire departments and the all-volunteer/mostly-volunteer breakdown. usfa.fema.gov
- National Volunteer Fire Council — Volunteer Fire Service Fact Sheet (Feb. 2026 edition), citing NFPA data — the 62% volunteer share of all 1,018,100 firefighters in 2023 and confirmation of the record-low finding. nvfc.org
- Fire Protection Research Foundation (NFPA), Total Cost of Fire in the United States (Zhuang, Payyappalli, Behrendt & Lukasiewicz, University at Buffalo, Oct. 2017) — the $46.9 billion value of volunteers' donated time, $41.9 billion in local fire department expenditures, and $1.3 billion in private donations, all 2014 estimates. nfpa.org
- U.S. Department of Homeland Security / — Fiscal Year 2026 Congressional Justification, Budget Overview — the $324 million AFG and $324 million SAFER appropriations, flat across FY2024 enacted, the FY2025 full-year continuing resolution, and the FY2026 request. dhs.gov
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Two-thirds of the country's firefighters are not paid to be firefighters. They are volunteers, and the arrangement is not a folksy footnote to American fire protection — it is the load-bearing structure of it. Of the 29,452 fire departments in the United States, 18,873 are all-volunteer and another 5,335 are mostly volunteer, per the U.S. Fire Administration's National Fire Department Registry. Take the volunteers away and most of the country loses its fire department. The volunteers are disappearing anyway.