The overriding characteristic of credit union member demographics is that the totals are, to use a technical term, hinky.
How can a consumer financial provider's total 146 million members account for 54% of the nation's adult population when they only account for 4% of first mortgages, 6% of credit card balances and about 30% of auto loan balances?
Reasons behind the mystery include that the numbers are not audited and people can belong to more than one credit union.
But while the total is an overcount, the composition and distribution of the membership measured as percentages might still be meaningful.
Here we present a few ways of looking at membership demographics. Readers are encouraged to maintain an open, but skeptical mind.
First, where are the members and where are they growing?
The geographic dispersion of the membership numbers is based on the fraction of each credit union's branches by state. In the absence of real state-level data, it's a crude way to break up membership for big, multi-state credit unions beyond their headquarters state. Think Navy. But the limits are shown by online-only outfits like Alliant Credit Union ($20.3 billion in assets, 923,396 members) with one office at its Chicago headquarters.
America's Credit Unions (AmCU) provided a list of percent of membership by state based on Equifax data covering consumer loans and residential real estate. Those fractions didn't differ that much from the branch-based breakdown, and with the branch data CU Times could make historical comparisons.
Census data shows the total population grew 3% from 2020 to 2025, while membership grew 17% – five times as fast as the general population.
Rolling state-level data into regions shows the biggest relative gain was in the West, where membership grew 35%, or 19 times faster than the population.
The Midwest's 10% gain in membership was smaller than the West or South, but it was more than eight times faster than the sluggish 1.1% growth of the population.
Membership grew 19% in the South, which was just three times faster than the population.
NCUA data shows membership fell 5% in the Northeast, compared with a 1.1% gain in the population.
AmCU also offered two other pieces of demographic data.
AmCU's age break-down was surprising if you think of credit unions tending to have an older population.
AmCU's Equifax data shows credit union had slightly fewer members in the 18-to-24 age group, but it was slightly over-represented among the 25-to-35 set – a key demographic for young people forming households.
And old folks were significantly underrepresented at credit unions.
Instead, credit unions were over-represented by 4 to 6 percentage points among those ages 35 to 54 – prime years for earning and borrowing.
AmCU also offered data by income for households headed by someone 25 to 54 years old classified by bank customer or credit union member by where they do the most business.
The income data is less surprising: It shows credit unions having more members than banks among those earning less than $100,000 per year, and significantly fewer among those earning $250,000 or more.
What was surprising is that households earning $100,000 to $200,000 were slightly over-represented at credit unions.
Median income was about $75,000 in 2022 and $84,000 in 2024, so it would be interesting to see more detail in the under $100,000 group.
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