Home / Research / How many journalists are in the US?
How many journalists are in the US?
JournalistLabs, 2026-10-26
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics counts about 47,100 jobs for news analysts, reporters and journalists in 2025. Our base holds 69,377 editorial staff based in the United States, at 6,345 outlets. The two numbers count different things: the BLS occupation leaves out editors, who are the largest group in our rows, with 30,040 of the 69,377.
Source: JournalistLabs, October 2026. BLS figure: Occupational Outlook Handbook, Reporters, Correspondents, and Broadcast News Analysts.
Our 69,377 rows are a file of named people with a newsroom title, not a census. They cover 54.4% of the 127,602 rows in the whole base. The US country page has the beat split.
US editorial staff by role
| Role | Rows | Share of 69,377 |
|---|---|---|
| Editors | 30,040 | 43.3% |
| Reporters | 22,945 | 33.1% |
| Anchors and presenters | 4,995 | 7.2% |
| Other editorial | 4,781 | 6.9% |
| News producers | 2,262 | 3.3% |
| Correspondents | 2,027 | 2.9% |
| Columnists | 1,786 | 2.6% |
| Critics and reviewers | 541 | 0.8% |
Source: JournalistLabs, October 2026.
That is 1.31 editors per reporter. If you add reporters, correspondents and anchors, the group closest to the BLS occupation, you get 29,967 rows, about 64% of the BLS job count.
By state
New York and California hold 18,400 of the 69,377 rows between them, 26.5%. We expected Washington, DC to rank high, but not this high: it has 3,142 rows, more than Pennsylvania or Illinois. New York has 2.12 editors per reporter. Ohio is the largest state with more reporters than editors, 630 to 597.
| State | Rows | Share of 69,377 | Reporters | Editors |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New York | 11,002 | 15.9% | 2,796 | 5,914 |
| California | 7,398 | 10.7% | 2,279 | 3,455 |
| Texas | 3,683 | 5.3% | 1,351 | 1,457 |
| Florida | 3,301 | 4.8% | 1,138 | 1,272 |
| District of Columbia | 3,142 | 4.5% | 1,090 | 1,249 |
| Pennsylvania | 2,337 | 3.4% | 736 | 1,034 |
| Illinois | 2,157 | 3.1% | 750 | 928 |
| Massachusetts | 1,759 | 2.5% | 515 | 844 |
| Georgia | 1,723 | 2.5% | 571 | 745 |
| Ohio | 1,667 | 2.4% | 630 | 597 |
| Virginia | 1,567 | 2.3% | 466 | 708 |
| North Carolina | 1,550 | 2.2% | 503 | 623 |
| Michigan | 1,462 | 2.1% | 552 | 558 |
| Washington | 1,456 | 2.1% | 543 | 599 |
| New Jersey | 1,385 | 2.0% | 308 | 764 |
| No state on file | 5,710 | 8.2% | 1,892 | 2,360 |
Source: JournalistLabs, October 2026.
The smallest of the 50 states in our rows are South Dakota with 68, North Dakota with 73, Delaware with 75 and Wyoming with 78. The full list of 53 states and territories is in the CSV below.
The largest US newsrooms on file
| Outlet | US rows |
|---|---|
| The New York Times | 1,716 |
| The Wall Street Journal (Dow Jones) | 877 |
| Bloomberg | 757 |
| CNN | 724 |
| ESPN | 667 |
| Associated Press | 624 |
| ABC News | 525 |
| CBS News | 520 |
| Sinclair Broadcast Group | 518 |
| NBC News | 481 |
Source: JournalistLabs, October 2026.
These ten account for 7,409 rows, 10.7% of the US total. Most US outlets on file are small: 4,917 of the 6,345 have fewer than ten rows, and 88 have 100 or more.
How we counted
A row counts as US when the person's own location is in the United States,
whatever the outlet's home country. Base: the 127,602 editorial rows with
platform_domain == 0 and media_typed == 1, people data pulled from July
to September 2026. Roles come from the job title. The
journalist statistics roundup collects
other published counts.
Dataset
us_by_role.csv, us_by_state.csv, README.md, METHOD.md
Cite this
JournalistLabs, How many journalists are in the US?, 2026-10-26, https://journalistlabs.com/research/how-many-journalists-in-the-us/.