In the Federal Reserve’s 2025 household survey, 10.9% of U.S. adults said they had paid an overdraft fee on a bank account in the past 12 months, and 6.1% said they did not have a checking, savings or money market account. Counting only people with an account, 11.6% paid an overdraft fee.
Both shares have stayed in a narrow range since 2022. The unbanked share was between 6.0% and 6.5% in each of the four years, and the overdraft share was between 10.5% and 11.0%. Survey estimates carry a margin of error, so moves of a few tenths of a point between years should not be read as a trend.
Overdraft fees and bank accounts, 2022 to 2025
| Survey year | No bank account | Paid an overdraft fee (all adults) | Paid an overdraft fee (adults with an account) | People surveyed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 6.0% | 10.5% | 11.1% | 11,667 |
| 2023 | 6.4% | 11.0% | 11.8% | 11,400 |
| 2024 | 6.5% | 10.8% | 11.5% | 12,295 |
| 2025 | 6.1% | 10.9% | 11.6% | 12,934 |
How we calculated this
We used the Fed’s public-use survey files and the survey weight in each file. "No bank account" is the weighted share answering No to question BK1, whether the person currently has a checking, savings or money market account. "Paid an overdraft fee" is the weighted share answering Yes to BK2_f. People without an account were not asked that question, so the all-adults figure counts them as not paying a fee; the second overdraft column divides by adults who said they have an account instead. The survey year is the year of the interview, which the Fed publishes the following spring. The same question numbers appear in each year’s file; we did not check every year’s questionnaire for wording changes.
If an overdraft fee hit your account, a credit union payday alternative loan or a small buffer in savings may cost less than repeated fees.
Source
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED), public-use data files for 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025, downloaded October 12, 2026. Federal Reserve data are public domain. The percentages are our weighted calculation, not figures published by the Fed, and are available under CC BY 4.0. Credit "My Credit Guide (mycreditguide.org)".
Steven Reynolds, "Overdraft Fees and Adults Without a Bank Account," My Credit Guide, October 12, 2026, https://mycreditguide.org/data/overdraft-fees-and-unbanked/.