86% of consumers in six countries say they will not answer a call from a number they do not recognize (Hiya, State of the Call 2026), which means voicemail is now the main landing spot for a large share of phone calls. Yet only 12% of UK Gen Z say they would leave a voicemail when a call goes unanswered, against 49% of the Silent Generation (Generationally Speaking, How the generations communicate 2024). In the US, 68% of adults get scam phone calls at least once a week (Pew Research Center, Online Scams and Attacks in America Today 2025), and 2,618,077 Do Not Call complaints were filed in fiscal year 2025 (FTC, National Do Not Call Registry Data Book 2025). We aggregated data from Pew Research Center, YouGov, AARP, US federal regulators, Apple, Google, Truecaller, YouMail and company disclosures reported in the press, and kept this roundup to classic phone voicemail: the voice notes people send inside messaging apps are covered in our voice message vs text preference statistics.
TL;DR
- 86% of consumers in six countries say they will not answer unidentified calls (Hiya, State of the Call 2026).
- 67% of US adults let unknown calls ring out but check any voicemail left, and 14% ignore the voicemail as well (Pew Research Center 2020).
- 25% of GB adults never leave a voicemail when someone they know does not pick up, and another 30% rarely do (YouGov, June 2023).
- 12% of UK Gen Z would leave a voicemail on an unanswered call, against 46% of Baby Boomers (Generationally Speaking 2024).
- 28% of GB adults would typically answer a call from an unknown number (YouGov, May 2025).
- 21% of US adults answer calls from unknown numbers (AARP, 2026 Fraud Survey).
- 52.5 billion robocalls reached US consumers in 2025, and 57% were scam or telemarketing calls (YouMail Robocall Index, January 2026).
- 82% of Americans have ignored important calls or texts out of fear of a scam, up from 59% in 2024 (Truecaller, Phone Fraud and AI Threat Survey 2026).
- 2,618,077 Do Not Call complaints were filed in fiscal year 2025, 1,601,611 of them about robocalls (FTC, DNC Data Book 2025).
- JPMorgan Chase switched off voicemail for roughly half of about 136,000 consumer bank staff in 2015 (CBS News 2015).
- Google Call Screen handled 37 million calls a month in the US, Canada and Japan (Google, October 2021).
1. Who Still Leaves and Checks Voicemail, by Age and Country
Voicemail has split into two different habits. Checking a message is still common because it works as a safety net for unanswered calls, while leaving one is collapsing among younger callers. Only 12% of UK Gen Z say they would leave a voicemail if a call is not answered, against 46% of Baby Boomers and 49% of the Silent Generation (How the generations communicate in 2024). Younger callers are not giving up on the call itself: they move the message to text instead.
The receiving side tells a similar story. In the most recent US survey on the question, two thirds of adults treat voicemail as a screening step: they let unknown calls ring out, then decide based on the message. A June 2023 poll of British adults shows that even among friends and family, more than half rarely or never leave a message.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| US adults who do not answer unknown numbers but check any voicemail left vs who ignore the voicemail as well (July 2020, n = 10,211) | 67% vs 14% | Pew Research Center, December 2020 |
| GB adults who leave a voicemail every time vs most times when someone they know does not answer (June 8, 2023, n = 4,019) | 5% vs 11% | YouGov Daily, June 2023 |
| GB adults who rarely vs never leave a voicemail when someone they know does not answer | 30% vs 25% | YouGov Daily, June 2023 |
| UK people who would leave a voicemail when a call is not answered: all ages vs Gen Z vs Millennials vs Gen X (July to September 2024, n = 4,067) | 26% vs 12% vs 16% vs 28% | Generationally Speaking 2024 |
| UK people who would send a text, message, voice note or email instead of leaving a voicemail: Gen Z vs Baby Boomers | 53% vs 15% | Generationally Speaking 2024 |
| US Gen Z adults who do not listen to their voicemail vs adults aged 25 and over (March to April 2020, n = 1,000) | 36% vs 13% | weBoost Good Call Survey 2020 (vendor-commissioned) |
| US Gen Z adults who do not set up a voicemail inbox when they get a new phone number vs adults aged 25 and over | 54% vs 41% | weBoost Good Call Survey 2020 (vendor-commissioned) |
Context: the US listening data in this section dates from 2020 (most recent available data). The weBoost Gen Z subgroup is small (n = 124), so treat its gap as directional. No regulator or carrier publishes a measured share of voicemails that are actually played back.
2. Answer Rates for Calls From Unknown Numbers
Voicemail volume depends on how many calls are refused first, and refusal is now the default. Only 28% of adults in Great Britain would typically answer a call from an unknown number, while 69% would not (YouGov, May 2025). Across six markets, 41% of consumers say they let an unidentified call ring to see whether the caller leaves a voicemail (State of the Call 2026), so the voicemail box has become a screening room rather than a message archive.
One counterintuitive detail: young adults are not the most call-shy group. In the UK survey, Gen Z were more willing to accept an unknown call (36%) than Gen X (24%), even though they are the least likely to leave a voicemail themselves (see section 1). In the US, AARP’s 2026 Fraud Survey found that about one adult in five still answers calls from unknown numbers.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Consumers in six countries (US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Spain) who say they will not answer unidentified calls (12,000+ respondents) | 86% | Hiya, State of the Call 2026 (vendor survey) |
| What consumers do with an unidentified call: answer immediately vs reject immediately vs let it ring to see if the caller leaves a voicemail | 14% vs 28% vs 41% | Hiya, State of the Call 2026 (vendor survey) |
| Consumers who never answer vs only sometimes answer unidentified calls (2025 edition) | 48% vs 32% | Hiya, State of the Call 2025 (vendor survey) |
| GB adults who would typically answer vs would not answer a call from an unknown number (May 14, 2025, n = 6,315) | 28% vs 69% | YouGov Daily, May 2025 |
| US adults who answer calls from unknown numbers (published April 2026, n = 1,696) | 21% | AARP, 2026 Fraud Survey |
| UK people who would accept a call from an unknown number: all ages vs Gen Z vs Gen X (2024, n = 4,067) | 31% vs 36% vs 24% | Generationally Speaking 2024 |
| US Gen Z vs Millennials who let calls ring on purpose, hoping the caller will text instead (July 2026, n = 1,213) | 77% vs 75% | NumberBarn 2026 survey (vendor-commissioned) |
| US Gen Z vs Millennials who feel anxious at least sometimes when an unknown number calls | 80% vs 73% | NumberBarn 2026 survey (vendor-commissioned) |
Context: in the NumberBarn survey, Gen Z means ages 18 to 29 and Millennials ages 30 to 45 (607 and 606 respondents). The UK generational survey does not name its panel provider.
3. Why Calls Go Unanswered: Spam, Robocalls and Scam Fear
The refusal habit in section 2 has a clear cause. 68% of US adults get scam phone calls at least once a week, and 21% get them several times a day (Online Scams and Attacks in America Today). The phone is the most spam-heavy channel in that survey, ahead of email and text, which explains why so many people push unknown calls straight to voicemail.
Robocall volume is not falling. The Robocall Index annual release put 2025 at 52.5 billion calls, close to 2024, but the mix got worse: scam and telemarketing calls climbed to 57% of the total (29.6 billion calls). The cost lands on legitimate callers. In a 2026 survey by the caller-ID app Truecaller, 82% of Americans said they had ignored important calls or texts because they feared a scam.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Robocalls received by US consumers, 2025 vs 2024, and the share that were unwanted telemarketing or scam calls, 2025 vs 2024 | 52.5 billion vs 52.8 billion; 57% vs 49% | YouMail Robocall Index, January 8, 2026 (vendor data) |
| US adults who get scam phone calls vs scam emails vs scam texts at least weekly (April 14 to 20, 2025, n = 9,397) | 68% vs 63% vs 61% | Pew Research Center, July 2025 |
| US adults who get scam phone calls at least daily vs several times a day | 31% vs 21% | Pew Research Center, July 2025 |
| US adults who get scam emails vs scam texts daily | 28% vs 20% | Pew Research Center, July 2025 |
| US adults who say they have experienced fraud (n = 1,696) | 38% | AARP, 2026 Fraud Survey |
| Unwanted calls per week: US consumers vs average across six markets | 9.9 vs 7.4 | Hiya, State of the Call 2026 press release, March 2, 2026 (vendor survey) |
| Americans who have ignored important calls or texts out of fear of a scam: 2026 vs 2024 (2026: n = 1,614, fieldwork by Centiment) | 82% vs 59% | Truecaller, Phone Fraud and AI Threat Survey 2026 (vendor survey) |
Context: outside the US, Truecaller’s metadata from its own users put the share of unknown calls that were spam or fraud in 2025 at 79% in Indonesia and 70% in Chile (up from 51% in six months), with 68 billion spam and fraud calls counted worldwide; the company says these figures are not a precise measure of all spam activity.
4. The Regulator View: US Complaint Data
Complaint counts measure how many people are angry enough to file a report, so they understate the problem, but they move in the same direction as the call data. Do Not Call complaints reached 2,618,077 in fiscal year 2025, up from 2,085,410 in fiscal year 2024 (FTC, National Do Not Call Registry Data Book 2025). That is an increase of 532,667 complaints, or 25.5% (our calculation: 532,667 / 2,085,410).
Robocalls, meaning calls that play a prerecorded message, dominate: 1,601,611 of the fiscal 2025 complaints, or 61.2% (our calculation: 1,601,611 / 2,618,077). The FCC separately received more than 125,000 unwanted call complaints in calendar 2025, led by debt relief and loan offers. The technical side of the fight, caller ID signing, is covered in our STIR/SHAKEN caller ID authentication statistics.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Unwanted call complaints received by the FCC, calendar year 2025 | More than 125,000 | FCC, National Consumer Protection Week release, March 6, 2026 |
| Top robocall scam categories in FCC complaints, 2025: debt relief or loan assistance vs insurance or healthcare vs government imposter | 27% vs 11% vs 7% | FCC, March 6, 2026 |
| Next robocall scam categories in FCC complaints, 2025: credit or credit cards vs Google listing | 4% vs 2% | FCC, March 6, 2026 |
| Do Not Call complaints: fiscal year 2025 vs fiscal year 2024 | 2,618,077 vs 2,085,410 | FTC, DNC Data Book 2025 |
| Fiscal 2025 Do Not Call complaints about robocalls vs live callers vs call type not reported | 1,601,611 vs 802,144 vs 214,322 | FTC, DNC Data Book 2025 |
| Fiscal 2025 unwanted call complaints compared with fiscal 2021 (about 5 million reports) | About 48% lower | FTC press release, December 11, 2025 |
| Active Do Not Call Registry registrations, as of September 30, 2025 | About 258.5 million (up about 1.9% over fiscal 2024) | FTC press release, December 11, 2025 |
Context: the fiscal year used for Do Not Call data runs from October 1 to September 30, and the complaints are unverified reports filed by consumers. Arizona (1,028), Tennessee (1,017) and Nevada (960) had the most complaints per 100,000 people in fiscal 2025, according to the December 11, 2025 release.
5. Companies That Switched Voicemail Off
The corporate retreat from voicemail happened a decade ago, and the numbers from that period still frame the debate. When Coca-Cola let staff at its Atlanta headquarters turn off office voicemail in December 2014, only 6% chose to keep it (report of December 22, 2014). The company estimated the saving at less than 100,000 dollars a year, which suggests the motive was workflow, not cost.
JPMorgan Chase went further in June 2015, removing voicemail for roughly half of its roughly 136,000 consumer bank employees (report of June 2, 2015). Phone-provider data from the same period pointed the same way: Vonage reported that voicemail retrievals fell faster than the number of messages left, a sign that people stopped listening before callers stopped talking.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| JPMorgan Chase consumer bank employees whose voicemail was switched off (June 2015) | Roughly half of about 136,000 | CBS News, June 2, 2015 |
| JPMorgan Chase expected annual saving from ending that voicemail | 3.2 million dollars a year | CBS News, June 2, 2015 |
| JPMorgan Chase units where staff no longer had voicemail | Up to 90% of employees | CBS News, June 2, 2015 |
| Coca-Cola headquarters staff who chose to keep voicemail after the opt-out (December 2014) | 6% | CBS News, December 22, 2014 |
| Coca-Cola estimated saving from dropping office voicemail | Less than 100,000 dollars a year | CBS News, December 22, 2014 |
| Vonage: year-over-year drop in voicemail messages left vs in voicemail retrievals (July 2012) | 8% vs 14% | Vonage press release, November 13, 2013 (company’s own figure) |
Context: most recent available data: press reports from 2014 and 2015, and Vonage figures for 2012. A later Vonage figure, an 8% decline in voicemails between October 2013 and April 2014, was reported in the Coca-Cola coverage. No carrier we checked has published voicemail deposit or retrieval volumes since then.
6. Screening and Transcription: What Replaces the Inbox
The industry answer to unplayed voicemail is to turn it into text, or to question the caller before the phone rings. Google said its Call Screen was handling 37 million calls a month in the US, Canada and Japan as early as October 2021 (Say hello to better phone calls), and Apple has moved the iPhone the same way. Its June 5, 2023 announcement introduced Live Voicemail, which shows a real-time transcript while the caller is still speaking, and its June 9, 2025 announcement added Call Screening, which builds on Live Voicemail.
Screening tools also exist because the voice on the line can no longer be trusted. Two vendor surveys found that between one in four and three in ten Americans received a deepfake voice call in the past year, a trend we track in our voice cloning family emergency scam statistics.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Date Apple announced Live Voicemail (real-time, on-device transcription as a caller leaves a message), iOS 17 | June 5, 2023 | Apple Newsroom, June 2023 |
| Date Apple announced Call Screening (asks unknown callers for details before the phone rings, built on Live Voicemail), iOS 26 | June 9, 2025 | Apple Newsroom, June 2025 |
| Calls screened per month by Call Screen on Pixel phones in the US, Canada and Japan (as of October 19, 2021) | 37 million | Google Keyword blog, October 2021 (company’s own figure) |
| Countries where Pixel phones screen calls automatically vs manually | 5 vs 11 | Google Phone app Help, read November 2026 |
| Americans who use no third-party app beyond their carrier’s built-in scam blocking tools | 63% | Truecaller, Phone Fraud and AI Threat Survey 2026 (vendor survey) |
| Americans who received a deepfake voice call in the past 12 months: survey released March 2, 2026 vs survey released April 21, 2026 | 1 in 4 vs 30% | Hiya, March 2, 2026; Truecaller, April 21, 2026 (vendor surveys) |
| Americans who lost money to a scam and had received a deepfake voice call vs targeted Americans who did not lose money | 53% vs 22% | Truecaller, Phone Fraud and AI Threat Survey 2026 (vendor survey) |
Context: automatic screening works in Australia, Canada, Ireland, the UK and the US; manual screening adds France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan and Spain (Phone app Help, Screen your calls before you answer them). On Pixel phones, every screened call saves a transcript on the device. We found no public figure for the share of iPhone or Android users who have turned visual voicemail or Live Voicemail on.
Summary: Voicemail Usage Decline by the Numbers
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Consumers in six countries who say they will not answer unidentified calls | 86% | Hiya, State of the Call 2026 |
| US adults who skip unknown calls but check the voicemail | 67% | Pew Research Center, 2020 |
| GB adults who never leave a voicemail for someone they know | 25% | YouGov, June 2023 |
| UK Gen Z vs Silent Generation who would leave a voicemail | 12% vs 49% | Generationally Speaking 2024 |
| US Gen Z who do not listen to their voicemail | 36% | weBoost 2020 (vendor-commissioned) |
| GB adults who would typically answer an unknown number | 28% | YouGov, May 2025 |
| US adults who answer calls from unknown numbers | 21% | AARP, 2026 Fraud Survey |
| US Gen Z who let calls ring hoping for a text instead | 77% | NumberBarn 2026 (vendor-commissioned) |
| US adults getting scam phone calls at least weekly | 68% | Pew Research Center, 2025 |
| Robocalls to US consumers in 2025 | 52.5 billion | YouMail Robocall Index, January 2026 |
| Scam and telemarketing share of US robocalls, 2025 | 57% | YouMail Robocall Index, January 2026 |
| Americans who ignored important calls or texts out of scam fear | 82% | Truecaller 2026 |
| Do Not Call complaints, fiscal year 2025 | 2,618,077 | FTC, DNC Data Book 2025 |
| FCC unwanted call complaints, 2025 | More than 125,000 | FCC, March 2026 |
| Coca-Cola headquarters staff who kept voicemail | 6% | CBS News, 2014 |
| JPMorgan Chase consumer bank staff who lost voicemail | Roughly half of about 136,000 | CBS News, 2015 |
| Vonage drop in voicemail retrievals, year over year (July 2012) | 14% | Vonage, 2013 |
| Google Call Screen calls screened per month (US, Canada, Japan) | 37 million | Google, October 2021 |
Methodology and Sources
- Pew Research Center: Most Americans don’t answer cellphone calls from unknown numbers (December 14, 2020), American Trends Panel, 10,211 US adults, July 13 to 19, 2020; and Online Scams and Attacks in America Today (July 31, 2025), 9,397 US adults, April 14 to 20, 2025.
- YouGov Daily, GB adults: voicemail habits, June 8, 2023 (n = 4,019) and answering unknown numbers, May 14, 2025 (n = 6,315).
- Generationally Speaking and Present Yourself Ltd, How the generations communicate in 2024: 4,067 UK respondents, July to September 2024, quotas by age band.
- weBoost Good Call Survey, April 22, 2020: 1,000 US adults, March 27 to April 1, 2020, vendor-commissioned.
- Hiya, State of the Call reports (vendor surveys of more than 12,000 consumers in the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany and Spain): 2026 findings, 2026 press release, March 2, 2026 and 2025 findings, October 21, 2025.
- AARP, 2026 Fraud Survey: 1,696 US adults aged 18 and older, page dated April 7, 2026.
- NumberBarn, 2026 Survey: Do Gen Z and Millennials Have Different Phone Habits? (August 11, 2026): 1,213 Americans, July 2026, vendor-commissioned.
- YouMail Robocall Index annual release, January 8, 2026: vendor call-blocking data.
- Truecaller: Phone Fraud and AI Threat Survey 2026, release of April 21, 2026, 1,614 US adults, February 20 to March 17, 2026, fieldwork by Centiment; and The ten most spammed countries in the world (May 4, 2026), metadata from the app’s users, January 1 to December 31, 2025.
- FTC: National Do Not Call Registry Data Book FY2025 and press release of December 11, 2025.
- FCC, National Consumer Protection Week release, March 6, 2026.
- CBS News: JPMorgan Chase silences voicemail for 136,000 workers (June 2, 2015) and Coca-Cola says life is better without voice mail (December 22, 2014).
- Vonage press release, November 13, 2013: company’s own voicemail usage figures for July 2012.
- Apple Newsroom: iOS 17 announcement, June 5, 2023 and iOS 26 announcement, June 9, 2025.
- Google: Say hello to better phone calls, October 19, 2021 and Phone app Help, Screen your calls before you answer them.
- Data watch: the unanswered-call headlines are not one trend line. The 2024 edition of Hiya’s report said 46% of unidentified calls go unanswered, the 2025 edition 80% and the 2026 edition 86%, but the editions describe the measure differently (share of calls vs share of consumers who say they will not answer), so we do not treat the jump as a measured change. AARP’s own page gives 21% of adults who answer calls from unknown numbers, while ABA Banking Journal coverage of the same survey reports 11%; we use AARP’s figure. The April 21, 2026 scam survey release has 80% in its headline and 82% in its body text; we use the body figure. Listening data dates from 2020, corporate and carrier figures date from 2012 to 2015, and we found no public adoption figure for visual voicemail or Live Voicemail. Ofcom’s UK scam call and communications market reports could not be retrieved for this edition. A 2023 voicemail-checking chart attributed to Verasight that circulates online was left out because its sample and method page could not be verified.
Last updated: November 8, 2026. We update this roundup quarterly, and the next refresh is expected when the FTC publishes its National Do Not Call Registry Data Book for fiscal year 2026 and YouMail releases its full-year 2026 Robocall Index.