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Court reporters

Official title Court Reporters and Simultaneous Captioners (SOC 27-3092)

Also called Stenographer, Captioner, Realtime reporter, Realtime captioner, Broadcast captioner

In brief

In May 2025, BLS counted 12,870 US court reporters, with median pay of $72,420 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2021, the highest was 14,240, in May 2022. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 7,000 from 1960, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for court reporters: Digital audio recording in courtrooms and Eclipse CAT maturation, 1996 to 2016.

What the sources say

Official outlook

BLS projects little or no change in employment from 2025 to 2035 (-0.1%).

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

AI exposure studies

Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. BLS publishes these counts as yearly survey snapshots and cautions against reading them as a precise trend.

Last updated .

Cite this page
APA

Future History. (2026, October 11). Court reporters: jobs and pay since 1960 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/27-3092

Chicago

Future History. "Court reporters: jobs and pay since 1960." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/27-3092.

BibTeX

@misc{futurehistory_27_3092, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Court reporters: jobs and pay since 1960}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/27-3092}}, note = {Last updated 2026-10-11. Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35}, }

The access date is today's date on your device.

drag to travel through time
1775180018251850187519001925195019752000now
2026
Known then as Shorthand Writer / Stenographer (pen-based, Gurney and Pitman systems)
Known then as Stenographic Reporter / Court Reporter (machine stenography era)
Known then as Court Reporter (CAT software emerging; verbatim record still pen or machine)
Known then as Court Reporter / Stenocaptioner (CART and broadcast captioning emerging)
Known then as Court Reporters and Simultaneous Captioners (BLS SOC 27-3092)
Known today as Court Reporters and Simultaneous Captioners (BLS SOC 27-3092)
Projected to still be called Court Reporters and Simultaneous Captioners (BLS SOC 27-3092)
Data from the May 2025 survey
US Employment
13K
Est.

Stated in source: BLS OEWS

Official statistic
Report an error
Median Annual Wage
$72,420
Est.

≈ $70,563 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)

Official statistic
Report an error
Beat · 1899

The National Shorthand Reporters Association (precursor to NCRA) was founded in Chicago with 156 charter members. Kendrick Hill was elected the first president. The association adopted a constitution and a minimum speed requirement of 150 wpm, establishing the first formal credential standard for the profession. By the 1910 convention, membership had grown to 580.

Beat · 1946

Congress established the federal official reporter system, creating a permanent corps of government-employed stenographic reporters for the US District Courts. This marked the first large-scale federal recognition of court reporting as a distinct professional role with government employment status, separate from the freelance tradition.

Beat · 1965

President Lyndon Johnson signed legislation requiring US District Courts to maintain both tape recording and a live certified reporter for federal proceedings. The dual-track requirement acknowledged the emerging digital recording technology while preserving the certified reporter as the primary record-keeper and officer of the court. This tension between technology and professional status would recur throughout the following decades.

Beat · 1975

NCRA introduced the Registered Professional Reporter (RPR) credential, replacing the older Certificate of Proficiency with a standardized national exam. Membership reached 7,100 following the RPR introduction, a 48% increase, as reporters who had previously worked outside the association joined to access the credential. The RPR became the baseline professional standard that has since been supplemented by the CRR (Certified Realtime Reporter) and CCP (Certified CART Provider) specializations.

Beat · 1990

The Americans with Disabilities Act created a federal mandate for communication accessibility that directly generated demand for CART captioning. Simultaneously, the Television Decoder Circuitry Act mandated closed-captioning receivers in all new TVs 13 inches or larger by July 1993, expanding the broadcast captioning market. Court reporters who had trained in realtime steno found themselves in demand in both new markets, diversifying the profession's revenue base significantly.

Beat · 2013

The NCRA-commissioned Ducker Worldwide industry study found approximately 32,000 stenographic court reporters employed in the US, with 70% aged 46 or older. The study projected a critical shortage of 5,500 positions by 2018. The shortage prediction proved directionally correct but the mechanism was not: the gap was filled not by new entrants but by AI transcription platforms and digital recording systems that displaced the positions rather than replacing them with new reporters.

Beat · 2024

NCRA celebrated its 125th anniversary in 2024 while the profession navigated its most disruptive period. The association maintained an active AI task force and published official guidance on the appropriate use of AI tools in certified reporting. The paradox of the profession in 2024: roughly 1,700 positions open per year for replacement (retirements and departures), but only 200-364 new NCRA certifications completed annually, creating persistent shortages in the protected niches even as AI displaces the commodity segment.

How to read this number

OEWS is a point-in-time survey snapshot, not a continuous time series; BLS advises against using it for year-over-year trend comparison.

Each dot is a cited figure over time; the dotted line only links them (values between aren't measured). Hollow dots are estimates.

Official statistic: Copied by a script from a statistics agency table or a published study's table, not retyped by hand. BLS figures and the forecast and exposure tables are also re-checked against that table on every data run. Researched context: Researched from the cited source rather than copied from it by a script, so it is not machine-checked yet. Spot a mistake? Each figure has a “Report an error” link.

Cited forecasts · present → 2035

Will AI replace court reporters? What the research says

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement rather than an average.

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, the spread is the honest signal.

What published forecasts say
Forecast change in the number of people doing this work, as published by each named source. Bars share one scale on every role, centred on zero and reaching the end at ±30%. Grey marks a small change, 3% or less either way.
BLS Employment Projections 2025-35
→ 2035
-0.1%
BLS National Employment Matrix, 2025-35 cycle, line for SOC 27-3092 (Court reporters and simultaneous captioners): 19.9 thousand jobs in 2025, projected 19.9 thousand in 2035, a change of 0.0 thousand (-0.1%). Matrix employment counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers (33.4% of this occupation in 2025). The average for all occupations in this cycle is +3.5%.
Official statisticReport an error
How exposed is this work to AI (research measures)
Scores as published by each study. Each row says what it measures. These measure what AI could technically do, not forecasts of jobs lost.
Eloundou et al. (2023), "GPTs are GPTs"
2023 study · Share of tasks exposed to LLMs (β, human-rated)
52.1%
of tasks
What this measures

Published occupation-level exposure from the paper's occ_level.csv for O*NET-SOC 27-3092.00 Court Reporters and Simultaneous Captioners. Shown: human-rated β = 0.521, the share of the occupation's tasks an LLM could do in at least half the time at equal quality, counting tasks that need LLM-powered software at half weight (β = E1 + 0.5 × E2). Other published measures for this occupation: human-rated α (LLM alone) 0.125 and γ (all LLM-assisted) 0.917; GPT-4-rated β 0.958. This measures how much of the work an LLM could touch, not how many jobs disappear.

Official statisticReport an error
Today, in this role

What's changing day to day for court reporters

Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.

AI is taking this onCaption pre-recorded video content for streaming platforms, educational publishers, and corporate communications: using 3Play Media or Rev AI as a first-pass ASR layer, then reviewing and correcting captions for accuracy, timing offset, speaker labeling, and compliance with WCAG 2.1 / Section 508 accessibility standards before delivery.

Caption pre-recorded video content for streaming platforms, educational publishers, and corporate communications: using 3Play Media or Rev AI as a first-pass ASR layer, then reviewing and correcting captions for accuracy, timing offset, speaker labeling, and compliance with WCAG 2.1 / Section 508 accessibility standards before delivery.[8],[9],[6]

Where your edge is

Pre-recorded video captioning is the most heavily automated segment of this occupation: Rev AI and 3Play Media now produce first-pass captions at high accuracy for standard English speech at a small fraction of the cost of human captioning from scratch. The role of human captioners in this workflow has shifted to quality reviewer and accessibility compliance specialist rather than primary producer. Pivot toward caption QA, accessibility consulting (advising organizations on WCAG 2.1 compliance and FCC captioning quality standards), and caption style guide development, positioning as an expert rather than a commodity producer.

AI is taking this onTranscribe and caption proceedings in administrative, legislative, and regulatory contexts (city council meetings, state legislative committee hearings, arbitration proceedings, and federal agency hearings) where AI/digital recording is increasingly authorized as an alternative to a certified stenographer under state administrative procedure acts.

Transcribe and caption proceedings in administrative, legislative, and regulatory contexts (city council meetings, state legislative committee hearings, arbitration proceedings, and federal agency hearings) where AI/digital recording is increasingly authorized as an alternative to a certified stenographer under state administrative procedure acts.[10],[5],[1]

Where your edge is

Administrative and legislative proceedings represent the segment most rapidly converting away from certified stenographers: many state administrative procedure acts have been amended to authorize digital recording + AI transcription, and For The Record (FTR) Gold digital recording systems are already installed in thousands of courtrooms and hearing rooms as the primary or backup record. This segment is effectively on a depletion trajectory. Exit proactively toward Article III court reporting, CART captioning, or broadcast captioning, all structurally harder to automate, rather than competing on rates for administrative work against AI platforms.

AI is sitting alongside you hereRecord depositions for civil litigation, capturing verbatim testimony of witnesses and experts outside the courtroom, managing audio/video synchronization with the stenographic record, and delivering searchable e-transcript packages (ASCII, PDF, PTX) to attorneys within the agreed turnaround window using Eclipse or ProCAT Sapphire CAT software.

Record depositions for civil litigation, capturing verbatim testimony of witnesses and experts outside the courtroom, managing audio/video synchronization with the stenographic record, and delivering searchable e-transcript packages (ASCII, PDF, PTX) to attorneys within the agreed turnaround window using Eclipse or ProCAT Sapphire CAT software.[4],[5],[1]

Where your edge is

Deposition reporting is the highest-volume and most economically important segment for freelance court reporters: the majority of NCRA members derive primary income from deposition work billed plus per-hour appearance fees. AI transcription services (Verbit, Rev) are now competing directly for this segment, offering round-the-clock turnaround. Defend by offering legal-grade certified transcripts with immediate realtime text feed, same-day rush turnaround, and exhibit management services that AI transcript vendors cannot bundle, and by building exclusive contracts with litigation support firms that require certified reporters for high-stakes matters.

Where court reporters go next

Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.

What each move takes

A direction you could grow

Compliance Officers

Compliance Officers share a critical skill with this occupation: precision documentation, verbatim record interpretation, and procedural accuracy in high-stakes regulated environments. Court reporters who have worked in financial services depositions, regulatory hearings, and SEC/CFTC enforcement proceedings have deep exposure to financial compliance workflows and regulatory language. As AI erodes the routine transcript production role, the compliance documentation and regulatory affairs skill set transfers well, and compliance officer roles are growing faster than the occupation average due to expanding financial regulation and AI governance requirements.

What you'd add
  • · Financial regulatory frameworks (SEC, FINRA, CFTC, bank examination standards)
  • · HRIS and GRC platform proficiency (Workday, ServiceNow, LogicGate)
  • · Regulatory change monitoring and policy mapping workflows
  • · Written compliance reports and audit documentation (vs. verbatim transcription)
  • · CRCM (Certified Regulatory Compliance Manager) certification for bank compliance specialization
What it takesSome new skills to pick up
Tools of the era

How has the work of court reporters changed since 1772?

The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.

  • Pen shorthand (Gurney, Pitman, Gregg systems)

    The entire art of verbatim record-keeping for over a century rested on pen shorthand. Thomas Gurney's Brachygraphy (1772) was the first system used in official English proceedings. Isaac Pitman's phonetic shorthand (1837) became the dominant system in Anglo-American courts for decades, eventually supplemented in the US by John Robert Gregg's cursive system (first American edition 1893). The ceiling was the speed of the human hand on paper; verbatim capture of rapid or overlapping speech required the reporter to fill in gaps from memory, a practice that introduced error and was openly acknowledged in court. The pen-shorthand reporter was a craftsperson whose skill was entirely embodied in trained motor memory.

  • Stenotype machine (Bartholomew 1879, Ireland 1906 refinement)

    Miles Bartholomew obtained the first US patent for a shorthand machine in 1879. Ward Stone Ireland refined the design in 1906 to a high-speed keyboard format that remains the basic layout of modern stenotype machines. By 1910, stenotype machines had entered US courtrooms. The machine transformed the reporter from a solo artisan into a specialist who had mastered a standardized, teachable instrument. Professional schools proliferated to train machine stenographers; the NCRA formalized certification. Transcription still required manual typed transcription from paper tape, a slow post-production step that dominated reporter work hours until CAT arrived.

    Effect on the work

    Machine stenography expanded the usable labor pool: the bar was now the machine's training curriculum rather than the idiosyncratic craft of memorizing personal shorthand symbols. This enabled a larger supply of reporters to serve the expanding federal court system established after World War II. By 1960, approximately 7,000 verbatim reporters were employed nationally.

  • Computer-Aided Transcription (CAT): from paper tape to searchable text

    The transcript crisis of the mid-20th century, caused by mounting civil litigation and inadequate reporter supply, drove the development of Computer-Aided Transcription. The CIA and court reporter Patrick O'Neill built the prototype CAT system in the early 1960s. By the 1970s, commercial CAT systems were becoming available. CAT software translated the reporter's stenographic chord strokes into written English automatically, eliminating the slow manual transcription step that had consumed a large share of a court reporter's work hours. The result was faster turnaround, more accurate transcripts, and dramatically higher output per reporter. It also laid the technical foundation for realtime reporting: if the machine could produce text immediately, it could produce text while proceedings were still ongoing.

    Effect on the work

    CAT adoption increased effective capacity per reporter substantially, reducing the transcript backlog that had plagued the courts since the 1950s. The efficiency gain helped the profession absorb growing caseload through the 1970s without proportional headcount growth.

  • Realtime steno + television captioning (NCI Academy Awards 1982, CART 1983)

    On March 22, 1982, a court reporter trained as a captioner provided the first real-time closed captioning of a live television broadcast: the Academy Awards on ABC, produced by the National Captioning Institute. In 1983, Linda Miller adapted the same workflow to live university lectures for deaf students: the technique became known as Computer-Aided Real-time Translation (CART). The ADA (1990) required captioning as an accommodation in public settings, creating the CART market. Court reporters who trained as stenocaptioners suddenly had two new verticals alongside traditional court work.

    Effect on the work

    The broadcast and CART markets absorbed many court reporters who might otherwise have left as the profession's litigation growth peaked. By the 1990s a significant share of NCRA membership worked in captioning as a primary or secondary income source.

  • Digital audio recording in courtrooms (FTR Gold) and Eclipse CAT maturation

    For The Record (FTR) developed the FTR Gold digital multi-track courtroom recording system, which began widespread deployment in US courtrooms through the late 1990s and 2000s. FTR Gold recorded all speakers simultaneously with timestamps, producing an audio record that could be reviewed or transcribed after the fact. Many jurisdictions adopted FTR Gold as a backup to the official reporter or, in lower-stakes administrative and misdemeanor proceedings, as the sole record. By 2014, FTR was installed in thousands of US courtrooms. Simultaneously, Stenograph's Eclipse CAT software matured into the industry standard, integrating AI-assisted conflict resolution, dictionary management with hundreds of thousands of entry personal dictionaries, and synchronized E-transcript packages. The Eclipse workflow raised reporter productivity and output quality but also raised the technical bar: reporters who did not invest in their Eclipse setup fell behind peers who did.

  • AI speech recognition (Verbit, AssemblyAI, Rev) and the AI-first transcript era

    Beginning around 2016-2017, deep-learning-based automatic speech recognition reached commercial viability for legal audio. AssemblyAI and Rev offered API-level transcription. The economics shifted sharply: AI-first transcription reduced routine transcript costs compared to full stenographic production, and law firms, arbitration providers, and administrative agencies began substituting. Several federal district courts launched digital recording pilots through PACER (2023-2024), authorized by administrative standing orders, displacing certified reporters in some routine matters. The profession's response has been to emphasize the three niches AI cannot yet reliably replace: certified Article III court work, ADA-mandated CART for complex academic and technical content, and live broadcast captioning under FCC accuracy standards.

    Effect on the work

    BLS OEWS wage-and-salary employment fell from 14,530 in 2019 to 12,630 in 2024, a decline in five years. BLS projects "little or no change" for 2024-34, suggesting the bottom is approaching as AI adoption reaches maturity in the most substitutable segments, leaving the protected niches intact.

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Court Reporters and Simultaneous Captioners employment and pay by year

On record since1772
Latest US employment12,870 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Latest US median pay$72,420 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Outlook-0.1% by 2035Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35Official statisticReport an error
View all 12 years of cited US data, each linked to its source
YearUS employmentAnnual pay (median unless marked)SourceReport
19607,000n/aEst., NCRA History of NCRA Researched contextReport
197520,000n/aEst., NCRA History of NCRA Researched contextReport
1982n/a$22,000Est., National Captioning Institute history Researched contextReport
2000n/a$39,660BLS OEWS 2000 Official statisticReport
201332,000n/aEst., NCRA / Ducker Worldwide Researched contextReport
201914,530$60,130BLS OEWS May 2019 (employment) Official statisticBLS OEWS May 2019 (pay) Official statisticReport
202013,880$61,660BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statisticReport
202112,300$60,380BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statisticReport
202214,240$63,560BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statisticReport
202312,390$63,940BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statisticReport
202412,630$67,310BLS OEWS May 2024 Official statisticReport
202512,870$72,420BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statisticReport
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