Passport processing times have returned to pre-pandemic norms as the holiday travel rush gets underway. At the height of the pandemic, some people were waiting up to three months to get their passport applications processed.
The Department of State says passport applications will be processed within eight weeks for normal service and three weeks for expedited service.
The department says it received an all-time high number of applications between October of 2022 and September of this year, issuing over 24 million books and cards in that time.
Only five percent of Americans had passports in 1990 and that number now stands at 48-percent with over 160-million valid US passports in circulation.