Across the total area of the future United States, indentured servants probably made up roughly 40 - 45% of all European migration before independence. In the early period of colonisation, this figure would have been much higher; as many as two-thirds of all free European migrants may have been indentured servants in the early seventeenth century, but very few would have been by the time of independence.

The proportion of indentured servants in the wider population would have been much lower by the time of independence. Not only were fewer and fewer servants coming to the continent as time went on, but the nature of indenture as a temporary condition means that every servant arriving in the US eventually became a free subject (if they lived long enough).

Most of this decrease in servant numbers would have already taken place by the dawn of the eighteenth century, as the institution of slavery developed and began to assert itself. By the time of independence, indentured servants would have constituted only a very small portion of the workforce; probably less than one-twentieth in most cases.