School bus driver count drops 10% nationwide since 2019

The national workforce for school bus drivers shrank by nearly 10 percent between 2019 and 2025. The total number of employed drivers decreased from 223,252 in August 2019 to 202,076 in August 2025. This decline has led to recurring transportation issues for students across the country.

In Fort Wayne, Indiana, thousands of students learned remotely for three days in April 2026 due to a lack of available drivers. South Carolina’s largest school district issued more than 7,000 delay notifications to parents during the first 10 weeks of the 2025-2026 school year. These disruptions have prompted many families to reconsider their reliance on district transportation.

Victoria Encarnacion lives in Waterbury, Connecticut, where her daughter regularly faces missed pickups. Encarnacion said her daughter once waited outside at a stop and realized no bus was coming. The girl walked for an hour to multiple stops before returning home. Encarnacion said the incident happened about once a month for her daughter.

“She called me and told me, ‘Mom, I quit,’” Encarnacion said. “For her to go through that effort just to make it to school, it’s impactful for me to be like, all right, you know, just stay home.” Encarnacion described the uncertainty of daily pickups as stressful, even if the issue occurs only a few times per month.

Mark Medina, a regional director for the National Association for Pupil Transportation, said drivers often feel trapped in a difficult position. He noted that a commercial driver’s license allows individuals to switch to other industries with higher pay. Medina said the association is working to secure retirement cap waivers and tax relief to improve compensation.

Medina said split shifts and changes in risk factors for an older workforce have made it hard to return to pre-pandemic staffing levels. He added that a “figure it out” attitude persists in the industry. “I believe that if that mindset continues, we’re going to be all right,” Medina said.

Lawmakers introduced the Driving Forward Act in 2025 to remove a specific training barrier for new drivers. The bill would exempt school bus drivers from the requirement to identify and explain how engine parts work. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration stated that this change would not affect safety. The current requirement adds three or four extra days of training for license holders.