Waiting times for U.S. passports, which have been at almost unbelievable levels for the past year or more as demand recovered from pandemic lows, have now finally dropped, but are still slow.
According to the State Department, routine applications are being handled in seven to ten weeks, down from eight to eleven recently and as long as fifteen not long ago. Expedited service, which carries a $60 extra fee, is now taking three to five weeks, down from five to seven. All those times are exclusive of time spent in the mail.
The State Department says it’s continuing to take action, issuing a statement that “We are aggressively recruiting and hiring across our passport agencies and centers. Our passport team members nationwide contribute tens of thousands of hours of overtime a month to issue the millions of passports sought by traveling Americans.”
A trial last year of a completely-online passport process handled about 500,000 applications before being suspended while results are analyzed; officials have said they hope to have it up and running on a permanent basis in the not-too-distant future.
