Only 42% of NIC performance exams were passed in fiscal year 2025, and only 31% of Certified Deaf Interpreter performance exams, according to the Center for the Assessment of Sign Language Interpretation (CASLI). That bottleneck feeds a certified pool that the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID) put at 10,049 certified members out of 14,053 total members in FY2023, while the BLS projects just 2% growth for interpreters and translators through 2035. Meanwhile, 41% of publicly funded mental health facilities reported no services in sign language in 2019 (Health Affairs 2022). We aggregated data from CASLI, RID, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, NCES, the UK’s NRCPD, and peer-reviewed studies in Health Affairs, JAMA Network Open, the Journal of Interpretation and the Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education. For the infrastructure side of signed communication, see our video relay service statistics.
TL;DR
- RID had 14,053 total members and 10,049 certified members in FY2023 (RID FY2023 Annual Report).
- 2,412 CASLI exams were taken in FY2025, up from 1,195 in FY2017 (CASLI Pass/Fail Exam Data by Fiscal Year).
- NIC performance exam pass rate: 42% in FY2025, 292 passed out of 699 (CASLI FY2025).
- CDI performance exam pass rate: 31% in FY2025, 18 passed out of 59 (CASLI FY2025).
- Only 401 RID members self-identified as Deaf in FY2023, versus 10,908 hearing members (RID FY2023 Annual Report).
- 62% of legal-setting interpreters surveyed did not hold RID legal specialist certification (Journal of Interpretation 2026).
- Interpreters and translators held 73,900 US jobs in 2025, with 2% projected growth to 2035 (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook).
- Median pay for interpreters and translators: $60,170 in May 2025 (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook).
- 70,000 students with hearing impairments were served under IDEA Part B in 2022-23 (NCES Digest Table 204.30).
- 59% of publicly funded substance use treatment facilities reported no services in sign language in 2019 (Health Affairs 2022).
- Close to 70% of interpreters in a Spanish study had musculoskeletal disorders serious enough to change their work (IJERPH 2022).
- The UK register lists 1,694 Sign Language Interpreters and 233 regulated trainees (NRCPD registration figures).
1. The Certified Pool: How Many Credentialed Interpreters Exist
The US has no federal license for ASL-English interpreters, so RID membership is the best public headcount of the credentialed workforce. RID counted 10,049 certified members in FY2023, out of 14,053 total members: roughly 71.5% of the membership (10,049 / 14,053) holds a credential, while 3,204 associate members sit in the pipeline without one.
The thin bottom of that pipeline is the warning sign. Only 610 student members were on the rolls, fewer than the 699 NIC performance exams CASLI administered in FY2025 alone. The pool is also spread unevenly across the five RID regions, with Region II holding the most certified members and Region IV the fewest.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Total RID members (FY2023) | 14,053 | RID FY2023 Annual Report |
| Certified members | 10,049 | RID FY2023 Annual Report |
| Associate (non-certified) members | 3,204 | RID FY2023 Annual Report |
| Student members | 610 | RID FY2023 Annual Report |
| Retired/inactive members | 101 | RID FY2023 Annual Report |
| Certified members, Region II (largest) | 2,489 | RID FY2023 Annual Report |
| Certified members, Region IV (smallest) | 1,327 | RID FY2023 Annual Report |
| Certified members based outside the US regions | 22 | RID FY2023 Annual Report |
Most recent available data: RID FY2023 Annual Report (July 2022 to June 2023), published on the RID governance and annual reports page. RID had not posted an FY2024 or FY2025 report there at the time of writing.
2. The Exam Bottleneck: FY2025 Pass Rates
Certification runs through two gates: the CASLI Generalist Knowledge Exam (two written parts) and a performance exam. The written tests are not the wall. The performance exams are: 58% of NIC performance attempts and 69% of CDI performance attempts failed in FY2025.
That gap matters for workforce math. A candidate who clears both written components can still wait through several testing cycles before earning a credential, and every failed performance attempt delays one more interpreter entering the certified pool. CASLI publishes the full series on its exam statistics page.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Total CASLI exams taken (FY2025) | 2,412 | CASLI Pass/Fail Exam Data by Fiscal Year |
| Total exams passed (FY2025) | 1,465 | CASLI Pass/Fail Exam Data by Fiscal Year |
| CGKE Fundamentals of Interpreting pass rate | 62% (498 of 808) | CASLI FY2025 Exam Data |
| CGKE Case Studies (Ethical Decision) pass rate | 78% (657 of 846) | CASLI FY2025 Exam Data |
| NIC performance exam pass rate | 42% (292 of 699) | CASLI FY2025 Exam Data |
| CDI performance exam pass rate | 31% (18 of 59) | CASLI FY2025 Exam Data |
| Total exams taken (FY2024) | 2,305 | CASLI FY2024 Exam Data |
Context note: CASLI counts exams, not unique people, so a candidate who tests twice in one fiscal year appears twice. The fiscal year runs July 1 to June 30.
3. A Decade of Testing: Volume Doubled, Performance Stayed Hard
The long series tells a story of recovery after disruption. A certification testing moratorium started January 1, 2016 and was lifted November 1, 2016, and the NIC performance test was paused again in 2019 during the move to the CASLI Exam System. Exam volume has since roughly doubled, from 1,195 exams in FY2017 to 2,412 in FY2025 (2,412 / 1,195 = 2.02x).
Performance pass rates improved from the mid-20s to the low-40s, but they have plateaued there for three straight years. The old NIC Knowledge Exam, by contrast, passed 84% to 90% of candidates before it was retired on January 1, 2021. Costs are rising too: CASLI announced its first fee increase since January 2023, effective October 1, 2026.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| NIC Interview & Performance pass rate (FY2017) | 25% (129 of 516) | CASLI FY2017 Exam Data |
| NIC Interview & Performance pass rate (FY2018) | 27% (185 of 693) | CASLI FY2018 Exam Data |
| NIC Interview & Performance pass rate (FY2019) | 32% (284 of 894) | CASLI FY2019 Exam Data |
| NIC Interview & Performance pass rate (FY2021) | 34% (290 of 858) | CASLI FY2021 Exam Data |
| NIC performance pass rate (FY2023, beta year) | 44% (226 of 519) | CASLI FY2023 Exam Data |
| NIC Knowledge Exam pass rate (FY2017) | 90% (587 of 651) | CASLI FY2017 Exam Data |
| CDI performance pass rate (FY2023) | 20% (5 of 25) | CASLI FY2023 Exam Data |
| Total exams taken (FY2017) | 1,195 | CASLI FY2017 Exam Data |
Outlier note: the FY2021 total of 1,521 exams includes 190 beta exams that were not yet scored, so its pass rates cover only scored tests.
4. Who Gets Certified: The Deaf Interpreter and Diversity Gap
The credentialed workforce does not look like the community it serves. In RID’s FY2023 self-reported demographics, only 401 members identified as Deaf, about 3.5% of the 11,571 members who reported a hearing identity (401 / 11,571). Deaf interpreters bring native-language fluency that hearing interpreters often cannot, yet the CDI track is also the one with the lowest performance pass rate.
The gender and ethnicity skew is just as steep. Of the 11,719 members who reported a gender identity, 9,923 identified as female (84.7%). Of the 11,616 who reported an ethnicity, 9,580 identified as European American or White (82.5%). New certifications in FY2023 barely shifted that mix, according to the RID FY2023 Annual Report.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Members identifying as Deaf (FY2023) | 401 | RID FY2023 Annual Report |
| Members identifying as hard-of-hearing | 259 | RID FY2023 Annual Report |
| Members identifying as female | 9,923 | RID FY2023 Annual Report |
| Members identifying as European American/White | 9,580 | RID FY2023 Annual Report |
| Members identifying as Hispanic/Latinx | 828 | RID FY2023 Annual Report |
| Members identifying as African American | 736 | RID FY2023 Annual Report |
| Newly certified CDIs announced after CDI beta (FY2023) | 38 | RID FY2023 Annual Report |
| Newly certified NIC interpreters announced (FY2023) | 125 | RID FY2023 Annual Report |
Context note: of the 89 newly certified interpreters who reported an ethnicity in FY2023, 66 identified as Euro American, 10 as African American, 8 as Hispanic and 5 as Asian American (RID FY2023 Annual Report).
5. Specialty Gaps: Courtrooms and Classrooms
General certification is only the floor. Courtrooms and schools demand specialist skills, and the data shows a thin bench in both. In the first national survey of legal-setting interpreters, 62% of 162 respondents did not hold RID’s specialist legal certification, and the average respondent was 52.7 years old with 27.6 years in the field (Lawrence and Whynot, Journal of Interpretation 2026). The authors describe a significant national shortage of legally qualified interpreters. The court-reporting side of the same access problem is covered in our CART and courtroom real-time translation statistics.
Classrooms face a different gap. Students with hearing impairments are a small share of special education (see our special education identification statistics), but they are spread across thousands of districts. In CASLI’s FY2021 demographic report, interpreters who worked mainly in K-12 settings passed the NIC Interview & Performance exam only 22% of the time.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Legal-setting interpreters without RID SC:L certification | 62% | Lawrence and Whynot, Journal of Interpretation 2026 |
| Legal-setting interpreters with RID SC:L certification | 38% | Lawrence and Whynot, Journal of Interpretation 2026 |
| Average age of legal-setting respondents | 52.7 years | Lawrence and Whynot, Journal of Interpretation 2026 |
| Average legal-setting experience | 16.8 years | Lawrence and Whynot, Journal of Interpretation 2026 |
| Students with hearing impairments served under IDEA Part B (2022-23) | 70,000 (0.9% of IDEA students) | NCES Digest of Education Statistics, Table 204.30 |
| NIC Interview & Performance pass rate, K-12 interpreters (FY2021) | 22% (86 of 386) | CASLI FY21 Demographics of Exam Takers |
| NIC Interview & Performance pass rate, VRS/VRI interpreters (FY2021) | 53% (39 of 74) | CASLI FY21 Demographics of Exam Takers |
| Educational interpreters in national roles survey | 482 | Guynes et al., Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 2026 |
Most recent available data: CASLI’s FY21 demographic report is the latest exam-taker breakdown CASLI has published; it covers self-reported respondents only. The NCES figure comes from Digest Table 204.30.
6. The Labor Market: Pay, Growth and the UK Benchmark
Federal labor statistics do not separate signed from spoken language interpreters, which is itself a data gap. For the combined occupation, the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook shows 73,900 jobs in 2025 and only 1,500 net new jobs projected by 2035, yet about 6,000 openings a year, which means most hiring is replacement for people leaving or retiring.
Self-employment is common at 28% of the occupation, and government employers paid the highest industry median. The UK, which runs a formal register, offers a useful benchmark for how small a credentialed signed-language workforce can be in a large country: the NRCPD registration figures list 1,694 Sign Language Interpreters and just 19 Deafblind interpreters.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| US interpreter and translator jobs (2025) | 73,900 | BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook |
| Projected employment growth, 2025-35 | 2% | BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook |
| Projected annual openings | About 6,000 | BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook |
| Median annual pay (May 2025) | $60,170 | BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook |
| Median pay in government (May 2025) | $74,320 | BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook |
| Self-employed share of the occupation | 28% | BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook |
| UK registered Sign Language Interpreters | 1,694 | NRCPD Registration Figures |
| UK regulated trainee sign language interpreters | 233 | NRCPD Registration Figures |
Context note: educational services employ 15% of interpreters and translators and hospitals 7%, with medians of $61,230 and $63,000 respectively (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook).
7. Access Gaps and Workforce Strain
Shortages show up on the consumer side first. Using SAMHSA facility data, a Health Affairs study found that 41% of mental health facilities and 59% of substance use treatment facilities receiving public funds reported no services in sign language in 2019 (James et al., Health Affairs 2022). Remote interpreting is often pitched as the fix, but a 2026 randomized trial found video remote interpreting improved some communication outcomes and not others.
The supply side is under physical and emotional strain, which feeds attrition. Among 16 early-career interpreters who left the field, 81% cited some type of emotional trauma (Wessling, Journal of Interpretation 2026). Repetitive signing also carries a physical cost; for the wider picture of hand-intensive occupational injury, see our occupational carpal tunnel syndrome statistics.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Public-funded mental health facilities without sign language services (2019) | 41% | James et al., Health Affairs 2022 |
| Public-funded substance use facilities without sign language services (2019) | 59% | James et al., Health Affairs 2022 |
| VRI trial: Deaf participants enrolled | 210 | Rivas Velarde et al., JAMA Network Open 2026 |
| VRI effect on being encouraged to express themselves | OR 1.90 (95% CI 1.13-3.18; P = .02) | Rivas Velarde et al., JAMA Network Open 2026 |
| VRI effect on understanding the doctor | OR 1.33 (95% CI 0.79-2.23; P = .28) | Rivas Velarde et al., JAMA Network Open 2026 |
| Interpreters who witnessed or experienced horizontal violence | 22 to 90% | Roman et al., Frontiers in Public Health 2026 |
| Early leavers citing emotional trauma | 81% of 16 | Wessling, Journal of Interpretation 2026 |
| Interpreters with musculoskeletal disorders serious enough to modify activities | Close to 70% | Jimenez-Arberas et al., IJERPH 2022 |
Context note: the VRI trial ran in a public hospital in Colombia (JAMA Network Open 2026), and the musculoskeletal study surveyed 62 Spanish sign language interpreters and guide-interpreters (IJERPH 2022), so neither is a US workforce estimate. The 22 to 90% range spans the prior studies reviewed in the Frontiers in Public Health perspective.
Summary: Sign Language Interpreter Credentialing by the Numbers
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Total RID members (FY2023) | 14,053 | RID FY2023 Annual Report |
| Certified RID members (FY2023) | 10,049 | RID FY2023 Annual Report |
| RID student members (FY2023) | 610 | RID FY2023 Annual Report |
| Members identifying as Deaf (FY2023) | 401 | RID FY2023 Annual Report |
| CASLI exams taken (FY2025) | 2,412 | CASLI Pass/Fail Exam Data by Fiscal Year |
| CASLI exams taken (FY2017) | 1,195 | CASLI Pass/Fail Exam Data by Fiscal Year |
| NIC performance pass rate (FY2025) | 42% | CASLI FY2025 Exam Data |
| CDI performance pass rate (FY2025) | 31% | CASLI FY2025 Exam Data |
| CGKE Case Studies pass rate (FY2025) | 78% | CASLI FY2025 Exam Data |
| NIC Interview & Performance pass rate (FY2017) | 25% | CASLI FY2017 Exam Data |
| Newly certified CDIs after CDI beta | 38 | RID FY2023 Annual Report |
| Legal-setting interpreters without SC:L | 62% | Journal of Interpretation 2026 |
| K-12 interpreter NIC IP pass rate (FY2021) | 22% | CASLI FY21 Demographics of Exam Takers |
| US interpreter and translator jobs (2025) | 73,900 | BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook |
| Projected growth, 2025-35 | 2% | BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook |
| Median annual pay (May 2025) | $60,170 | BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook |
| UK registered Sign Language Interpreters | 1,694 | NRCPD Registration Figures |
| Mental health facilities without sign language services (2019) | 41% | Health Affairs 2022 |
| Students with hearing impairments under IDEA (2022-23) | 70,000 | NCES Digest Table 204.30 |
Methodology and Sources
- CASLI Exam Statistics, Pass/Fail Exam Data by Fiscal Year FY2017-FY2025 and FY21 Demographics of Exam Takers
- CASLI, New CASLI Exam Rates announcement (August 2026)
- Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf, FY2023 Annual Report (governance and annual reports page)
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook: Interpreters and Translators
- NCES Digest of Education Statistics, Table 204.30
- NRCPD, Registration figures
- Lawrence and Whynot, Sign Language Interpreting in Legal Settings: A Survey of the Field, Journal of Interpretation 34(1), 2026
- Wessling, The Problem with People: Signed Language Interpreter Disposition Match and Attrition, Journal of Interpretation 34(1), 2026
- James et al., Communication Access in Mental Health and Substance Use Treatment Facilities for Deaf ASL Users, Health Affairs 2022
- Rivas Velarde et al., Video Remote Sign Language Interpreting and Health Communication for Deaf Patients, JAMA Network Open 2026
- Roman et al., Workplace violence and mistreatment in the sign language interpreting field, Frontiers in Public Health 2026
- Jimenez-Arberas et al., Musculoskeletal disorders in Spanish sign language interpreters and guide-interpreters, IJERPH 2022
- Guynes et al., Roles and responsibilities of educational interpreters, Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 2026
- Data watch: RID’s FY2023 Annual Report is the newest posted on its governance page; membership and demographic counts are self-reported, so demographic totals (11,571 to 11,719 respondents) do not match total membership, and our percentages use only those who answered. CASLI figures count exams, not unique candidates, and the FY2023 and FY2024 NIC performance numbers include the tail of a beta period. CASLI’s demographic breakdown by setting is from FY2021 (most recent available data) and should be read as directional. BLS data covers spoken and signed language interpreters and translators together; there is no federal ASL-only employment series. The NRCPD page shows no reference date (accessed October 2026), and its total includes dual registrations. CASLI’s new fee amounts were published only in a linked document we did not cite. No single public count of SC:L holders was available.
- Last updated: October 4, 2026. We update this roundup quarterly, and the next refresh is expected when RID posts its next annual report and CASLI publishes FY2026 pass/fail exam data.