Bank tellers
Official title Tellers (SOC 43-3071)
Also called Teller, Head teller, Senior teller, Universal banker, Relationship teller
In brief
In May 2025, BLS counted 329,480 US bank tellers, with median pay of $43,030 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2021, the highest was 364,210, in May 2021. The earliest figure here is a Census count of 135,000 from 1960, not measured the same way as today's count.
What the sources say
Official outlook
BLS projects employment to decline 13.2% from 2025 to 2035.
AI exposure studies
- 33.3% of this job's tasks are exposed to large language models. Not a forecast of job losses. Eloundou and others, 2023
- 0.98 estimated probability that the whole occupation could be computerised, over an unspecified number of years. Not a forecast of job losses. Frey and Osborne, 2013
Since the 2013 prediction
In 2013, Frey and Osborne put this job's probability of computerisation at 0.98. BLS counted 527,680 of these jobs in May 2013 and 329,480 in May 2025. The count moved sharply in one step, May 2020 to May 2021, when BLS changed how it estimates these counts, so no change is derived here.
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. In May 2021 BLS changed how it estimates these counts (a model-based method using three years of survey data) and moved fully to the 2018 occupation codes, so part of a change across 2021 can come from the method rather than the work.
Last updated .
Cite this page
Future History. (2026, October 11). Bank tellers: jobs and pay since 1960 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/43-3071
Future History. "Bank tellers: 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/43-3071.
@misc{futurehistory_43_3071, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Bank tellers: jobs and pay since 1960}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/43-3071}}, 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.
≈ $41,927 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)
The First Bank of the United States opens in Philadelphia with seven employees, including George Simpson as cashier. The word 'teller' derives from the Old English 'to tell', to count. In early American banks, the cashier was the principal operating officer; tellers beneath the cashier physically counted currency to and from customers. When Stephen Girard purchased the First Bank's assets in 1812 after its charter expired, he rehired George Simpson and reopened with the same seven employees: a reminder that the early American bank's entire operation was small enough to fit in one room.
February 25, 1863: President Lincoln signs the National Bank Act, establishing the first nationally chartered banking system and creating the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. A supplementary act followed in 1864. The Act created a single national currency, replacing hundreds of incompatible state-bank paper currencies, and set the banking infrastructure that would grow the US financial system through the Gilded Age and into the 20th century. For tellers, standardized currency was transformative: evaluating whether a banknote was genuine and what it was worth in specie had been a major daily skill; the national currency eliminated most of that complexity.
June 16, 1933: President Roosevelt signs the Banking Act of 1933 (Glass-Steagall), creating the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and separating commercial from investment banking. FDIC insurance (guaranteeing deposits up to $2,500 initially, later raised repeatedly) eliminated the bank-run dynamic that had destroyed one-third of US banks in 1930-1933 and wiped out millions of depositors. For tellers, Glass-Steagall transformed the occupation's existential context: working at a bank was no longer a job that might disappear next month in a panic. The FDIC-backed retail bank became one of the most stable employers in the American economy, and teller employment grew steadily for the next seven decades.
September 2, 1969: Chemical Bank opens the first automated teller machine in the United States at its branch in Rockville Centre, Long Island. The machine (a Docuteller, designed by Donald Wetzel of Docutel) was advertised with the slogan: 'On Sept. 2 our bank will open at 9:00 and never close again.' Chemical executives had been skeptical; they feared customers would reject machine-handled cash. The pilot proved otherwise. By 1974, Docutel had captured approximately 70% of the US ATM market. This machine, more than any other single device, would define the subsequent fifty years of the teller occupation, but not in the way the skeptics feared. The Bessen paradox was about to begin.
BLS OEWS records 603,150 tellers, near the series peak of 607,960 in 2007. The 1970 Census counted 254,000 bank tellers; the two are different surveys, so the gap between them is not an exact growth figure, but teller jobs did not shrink while ATMs spread. James Bessen's analysis in 'Learning by Doing' (Yale University Press, 2015) documented the mechanism: ATMs cut the number of tellers needed to run a branch, making branches cheaper to operate. Cheaper branches meant banks could profitably open more of them, and more branches meant more tellers. The paradox held until mobile banking cut branch visits.
USAA launches mobile check deposit: one of the first US banks to enable customers to photograph and deposit checks via smartphone, without entering a branch. USAA subsequently engaged in extensive patent litigation to protect its claims on the technology. Mobile check deposit was the single most important branch-traffic-reducing innovation in the history of retail banking because check deposit had been one of the top two or three reasons customers entered branches. When that routine transaction migrated to a smartphone, the economic logic of the 1970s-2000s branch expansion strategy began to unravel. The Bessen paradox, ATMs → cheaper branches → more branches → more tellers, broke when mobile banking removed the customer's need to enter a branch for routine transactions at all.
BLS OEWS records 352,440 tellers, against 607,960 at the 2007 peak (BLS changed its OEWS estimation method in May 2021, so the two are not an exact like-for-like change). The American Bankers Association survey documents that 55% of US bank customers use mobile apps as their primary banking method by 2024, up from 21% in 2012. Branch counts at major retail banks (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo) have fallen approximately 50% from their 2010-2012 peaks. Each branch closure eliminates 10-20 teller positions. The pandemic-era acceleration of digital banking adoption in 2020 removed the last friction that had kept older customers in branches. What Bessen documented as a paradox of induced demand has inverted: the mobile-banking era is producing exactly the straightforward substitution that ATMs never produced.
BLS projects teller employment to fall from 347,400 (2024) to approximately 302,500 (2034): a further -12.9% decline on top of the roughly 44% OEWS-measured decline from 2006 to 2024. The BLS projection is likely the conservative case: it does not model AI-powered chatbots absorbing the remaining information-delivery work of human tellers, nor does it model ITM (Interactive Teller Machine) adoption that allows single remote tellers to serve multiple branches by video. The floor of the teller occupation, the genuinely human functions that technology cannot replicate, is unclear. Community banks and credit unions cite human relationship banking as a competitive differentiator against app-first neobanks. Whether that differentiator sustains meaningful teller employment beyond 2034 is the open question at the bottom of the uncertainty cone.
Will AI replace bank tellers? 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's changing day to day for bank tellers
Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.
AI is taking this onMonitor and reconcile cash drawer balances using teller cash recycler (TCR) systems
Monitor and reconcile cash drawer balances using teller cash recycler (TCR) systems; process currency authentication alerts and vault discrepancy reports, escalating cash-count exceptions to the head teller.[6],[11]
Shift focus from physical cash counting to exception-resolution and audit documentation. Learn your branch TCR system configuration so you can diagnose jams and integration errors that require human intervention rather than simply processing routine deposits.
AI is sitting alongside you hereProcess over-the-counter check and cash deposits that fall outside mobile/ATM limits
Process over-the-counter check and cash deposits that fall outside mobile/ATM limits; verify endorsements, examine checks for fraud indicators (altered amounts, missing MICR line), and enter transactions into the core banking system.[2],[1]
Develop sharp check-fraud detection skills: altered amounts, washed checks, and counterfeit items still reach branch windows even as volume falls. Customers who bring in paper deposits often need reassurance and education about digital alternatives -- treat each interaction as a trust-building opportunity.
AI is sitting alongside you hereMaintain vault cash inventory under dual-control procedures: reconcile TCR vault totals against core system records, process armored-carrier currency shipments, and prepare Currency Transaction Reports (CTRs) for cash transactions exceeding $10,000.
Maintain vault cash inventory under dual-control procedures: reconcile TCR vault totals against core system records, process armored-carrier currency shipments, and prepare Currency Transaction Reports (CTRs) for cash transactions exceeding $10,000.[2],[12]
Develop deep BSA/AML compliance knowledge -- the CTR and Suspicious Activity Report filing obligations around cash transactions are regulatory, not optional, and tellers who understand the underlying rules (not just the forms) are more valuable than those who only follow a checklist.
Where bank tellers go next
Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.
- Loan Officers
- US median pay
- $76,690 (May 2025)
- BLS outlook 2025-35
- +1.1%
- New Accounts Clerks
- US median pay
- $47,670 (May 2025)
- BLS outlook 2025-35
- -6.5%
What each move takes
Loan Officers
Tellers already understand banking products, customer financial needs, and core banking systems -- the same foundations loan officers build on. NMLS licensing (a federal exam with pre-licensure education) is the primary gate for mortgage loan officers, but consumer and commercial lending roles at community banks often hire from the teller line without requiring it upfront. Banks running universal banker programs actively develop this pathway internally.
- · NMLS pre-licensure education (20 hours federal + state hours) and SAFE Mortgage Loan Originator Test for mortgage lending roles
- · Credit analysis fundamentals: debt-to-income calculation, credit report interpretation, loan-to-value ratios
- · Product knowledge across consumer, mortgage, and small business loan types offered at your institution
- · Consultative sales skills: needs discovery, objection handling, pipeline tracking in a CRM
How has the work of bank tellers changed since 1791?
The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.
Coin scales, cash drawers, and handwritten ledgers (early American banking era)
The first American bank tellers worked at counting tables with coin scales, quill pens, and ruled ledger books. Their instrument set was the same as a merchant's counting house: weights and measures for coin, ink for recording, and the mental arithmetic to balance to the penny at day's end. Paper currency was a tangle of state-bank notes with no standard value: a teller in 1820 needed to be familiar with hundreds of different bank notes from dozens of state-chartered institutions, evaluating each for counterfeiting risk and current exchange rate. The Coin's Financial School (1894) would later document how this knowledge of irregular currency was a genuine craft skill. Until the National Bank Act of 1863 created a unified national currency, the teller's most important job was not just counting money but deciding which money was real and what it was worth.
Effect on the workThe occupation was almost entirely male and was considered a respectable but not prestigious clerical position.
National currency + teller cages + mechanical cash registers (national banking era)
The National Bank Act of 1863 gave tellers a stable, unified medium to count. National bank notes replaced the circus of state-bank paper; after the Civil War a dollar was a dollar at any national bank counter. By the 1880s the architectural vocabulary of the American bank had standardized around the teller cage: a brass or wrought-iron grille that enclosed the teller's position, separating the cash drawer from the banking floor. The cage was security theater in part (bank robbers climbed over cages; shotgun guards were the real deterrent) but it also created the spatial identity of the teller's role: bounded, precise, accountable. NCR mechanical cash registers entered banking in the 1890s, automating some of the arithmetic of daily balancing. The 1900s-1920s were the high-water mark of the teller cage era: marble banking halls, uniformed guards, suited male tellers behind grilles, the transaction conducted in near silence.
Effect on the workEmployment grew steadily with the expansion of commercial banking from 1863 through the 1920s boom. The banking panics of 1907 and the instability of the 1920s (thousands of bank failures before the Depression) suppressed growth in some periods; the Great Depression's wave of bank failures (approximately one-third of all US banks failed 1930-1933) destroyed teller jobs alongside the institutions.
FDIC-backed retail banking + open teller counters replacing cages (post-Depression era)
The Banking Act of 1933, Glass-Steagall, stabilized American banking by separating commercial and investment banking, creating the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and giving depositors a government guarantee that made bank runs irrational. FDIC insurance is the single most important structural change in the history of bank teller employment because it converted banking from an episodically terrifying occupation (your bank might fail next month) into a stable, entry-level service job. Through the 1940s and 1950s, as prosperity returned and suburban expansion created millions of new banking customers, banks began removing teller cages in favor of open counters: a symbolic shift that reframed the teller from cash custodian to customer service representative. The postwar bank was friendly, clean, and staffed by tellers who were encouraged to smile and cross-sell savings products. Employment grew steadily through this era as suburban branch networks expanded.
Effect on the workTeller employment grew as suburban branch banking expanded with the postwar economy: the Census counted 135,000 bank tellers in 1960 and 254,000 in 1970, both on the 1970 occupation classification. The women's workforce entered teller positions in significant numbers through this period: the occupation shifted from predominantly male (pre-Depression) to predominantly female by the 1960s, as it has remained since.
Chemical Bank Docuteller (first US ATM, September 2, 1969) → ATM ubiquity
On September 2, 1969, Chemical Bank opened the first ATM in the United States at its branch in Rockville Centre, Long Island, New York. The machine was a Docuteller, designed by Donald Wetzel of Docutel. Chemical Bank advertised the event with a slogan that proved either brilliant or premature depending on your vantage point: 'On Sept. 2 our bank will open at 9:00 and never close again.' Chemical executives had been skeptical, the machines were expensive and they feared customers would distrust them, but the pilot proved customers would use them, and even pay usage fees. By 1974, Docutel had captured approximately 70% of the US ATM market. By the 1980s ATMs were ubiquitous: shared networks (Cirrus, Plus, NYCE) made ATM cards work across banks; by 1990 there were tens of thousands of ATMs in the US. This is where the simple story, automation replaces workers, broke down. James Bessen's analysis in 'Learning by Doing' (Yale University Press, 2015) documented the paradox: ATMs reduced the number of tellers per branch. This made each branch cheaper to operate. Cheaper branches meant banks could profitably open more branches, especially in suburban and rural areas that had been too thinly populated to justify full-service banking before. More branches meant more tellers. Teller jobs did not shrink as ATMs became universal: the Census counted 254,000 bank tellers in 1970, and BLS counted 453,140 tellers in 1999 and 607,960 in 2007 (different surveys, so not one series). Tellers had shifted their work from cash dispensing, which ATMs now handled, to relationship banking: opening accounts, making sales referrals, handling complex transactions, resolving disputes, and serving the customers whose needs the machine couldn't meet.
Effect on the workThe Bessen ATM paradox is among the most-cited examples in labor economics of automation that did not reduce aggregate employment in the automated occupation. Per-branch teller headcount fell; total employment grew. This is the canonical counter-case to simple substitution economics, and the paradox that collapsed when mobile banking removed the branch-growth dynamic.
Internet banking (Wells Fargo 1995): first erosion of branch traffic
Wells Fargo launched internet banking in 1995: the first major US bank to offer account access, balance checking, and bill payment over the web. The other major banks followed through the late 1990s. Online banking reduced branch traffic for certain routine tasks (checking balances, bill payment), but it did not reduce it for cash handling or check deposits: the two most common reasons customers entered branches. Through 2007, the branch expansion dynamic of the ATM era remained intact: online banking had not yet undermined the rationale for branch growth. Teller employment continued growing, reaching its peak of 607,960 (BLS OEWS) in 2007. The financial crisis of 2007-2009 then caused significant job losses across all banking occupations as bank balance sheets contracted and branch investment halted. This crisis-driven contraction set the stage for the structural decline that mobile banking would accelerate.
Effect on the workInternet banking began the incremental erosion of branch traffic but did not break the branch-expansion dynamic that had driven teller employment growth. Employment peaked around 2007 before the financial crisis and mobile banking combined to reverse the Bessen dynamic.
Mobile check deposit (USAA 2009; Chase/BofA/WF 2011-2013): the branch-visit collapse
USAA, the military-member financial services company, launched mobile check deposit in 2009, becoming one of the first US banks to enable customers to photograph a check and deposit it without visiting a branch. USAA's innovation was so significant that the company subsequently engaged in extensive patent litigation to protect its claims on the technology. The major retail banks followed: Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo all deployed mobile check deposit between 2011 and 2013. The impact on branch traffic was immediate and structural. Depositing a check had been one of the two or three most common reasons customers entered a bank branch. When that task migrated to a smartphone, branch visit frequency dropped sharply, and the economic rationale for maintaining the branch network that had sustained teller employment growth since the 1970s began to dissolve. Banks responded with aggressive branch consolidation. JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and other major retail banks collectively reduced their branch counts from their 2010-2012 peaks to 2024. The Federal Reserve documented a reduction in US bank branches from 2012 to 2022. Each branch closure eliminated several teller positions. BLS OEWS teller employment fell from 607,960 (2007) to 498,460 (2015) to 352,440 (2022) to 339,340 (2024).
Effect on the workMobile check deposit broke the Bessen dynamic: as mobile banking reduced branch traffic, branch consolidation followed, and with it a structural collapse of teller employment that ATM deployment had never produced. The decline in teller employment from the 2006-2007 peak to 2024 dwarfs any prior contraction in the occupation's history.
COVID branch closures + AI teller chat + relationship banking imperative
COVID-19 branch closures in spring 2020 accelerated digital banking adoption more in three months than the prior decade's gradual shift had achieved. Millions of customers used mobile and online banking for the first time out of necessity and many did not return to branch-dependent habits. The remaining teller workforce has shifted significantly toward relationship banking functions: the teller of 2024 spends more time on account opening, product referrals, financial guidance, fraud escalation, and complex customer situations than on cash counting. Automated teller machines and ITMs (Interactive Teller Machines, which connect customers to remote human tellers by video) are absorbing the remaining routine cash transactions. Several major banks have piloted teller-free branch formats ('micro-branches') where no teller is stationed and all transactions are handled at ATM kiosks or via video appointment. BLS projects a further decline through 2034, from 347,400 (2024) to approximately 302,500 (2034).
Effect on the workThe occupation is not projected to vanish entirely because the relationship banking and complex-transaction functions that remain are genuinely resistant to full automation. But the mass-employment role of the 1980s-2000s is unlikely to return.
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In other countries
The latest figure each country's statistics agency publishes for this job. Each uses its own occupation definition, survey basis and currency, so the numbers are not directly comparable with each other or with the US figures.
Canada (NOC 64400)
- Employment, 2020
- 58,750, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021: number of persons with employment income in NOC 64400 Customer services representatives - financial institutions, Canada, reference year 2020. A recipients basis (anyone with employment income during the year), slightly broader than a point-in-time employed count. Statistics Canada Open Licence.
- Median pay, 2020
- C$45,600, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021 (Table 98-10-0586): median employment income for NOC 64400 Customer services representatives - financial institutions, Canada, reference year 2020, full-year full-time workers (the basis comparable to the US OEWS full-time median). Statistics Canada Open Licence.
View all 29 years of cited US data, each linked to its source
| Year | US employment | Annual pay (median unless marked) | Source | Report |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1960 | 135,000 | n/a | Decennial Census 1970 Official statistic | Report |
| 1970 | 254,000 | $5,500 | Decennial Census 1970 (employment) Official statisticEst., FRASER / BLS Monthly Labor Review (pay) Researched context | Report |
| 1999 | 453,140 | n/a | BLS OEWS 1999 Official statistic | Report |
| 2000 | 492,950 | n/a | BLS OEWS 2000 Official statistic | Report |
| 2001 | 532,740 | n/a | BLS OEWS 2001 Official statistic | Report |
| 2002 | 526,750 | n/a | BLS OEWS 2002 Official statistic | Report |
| 2003 | 538,890 | $20,670 | BLS OEWS May 2003 Official statistic | Report |
| 2004 | 552,860 | $21,120 | BLS OEWS May 2004 Official statistic | Report |
| 2005 | 599,220 | $21,300 | BLS OEWS May 2005 Official statistic | Report |
| 2006 | 603,150 | $22,140 | BLS OEWS May 2006 (employment) Official statisticBLS OEWS May 2006 (pay) Official statistic | Report |
| 2007 | 607,960 | $22,920 | BLS OEWS May 2007 Official statistic | Report |
| 2008 | 600,380 | $23,610 | BLS OEWS May 2008 Official statistic | Report |
| 2009 | 576,580 | $23,980 | BLS OEWS May 2009 Official statistic | Report |
| 2010 | 556,310 | $24,100 | BLS OEWS May 2010 Official statistic | Report |
| 2011 | 544,150 | $24,590 | BLS OEWS May 2011 Official statistic | Report |
| 2012 | 541,770 | $24,940 | BLS OEWS May 2012 Official statistic | Report |
| 2013 | 527,680 | $25,390 | BLS OEWS May 2013 Official statistic | Report |
| 2014 | n/a | $25,760 | BLS OEWS May 2014 Official statistic | Report |
| 2015 | 498,460 | $26,410 | BLS OEWS May 2015 Official statistic | Report |
| 2016 | 496,760 | $27,260 | BLS OEWS May 2016 Official statistic | Report |
| 2017 | 491,150 | $28,110 | BLS OEWS May 2017 Official statistic | Report |
| 2018 | 468,470 | $29,450 | BLS OEWS May 2018 Official statistic | Report |
| 2019 | 442,120 | $31,230 | BLS OEWS May 2019 Official statistic | Report |
| 2020 | 423,570 | $32,620 | BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statistic | Report |
| 2021 | 364,210 | $36,310 | BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statistic | Report |
| 2022 | 352,440 | $36,380 | BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statistic | Report |
| 2023 | 340,820 | $37,640 | BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statistic | Report |
| 2024 | 339,340 | $39,340 | BLS OEWS May 2024 Official statistic | Report |
| 2025 | 329,480 | $43,030 | BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statistic | Report |
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