How Many Advisors Have Left Edward Jones in 2026?

The question arrives in some form every week, from advisors, from journalists, and from Edward Jones advisors who want to know whether the departures they hear about in the branch network are a trend or a rumor. Here is the count as of mid-September, from the registration record.

396 producing advisors left Edward Jones between January 1 and September 17, 2026.

That figure comes from our registered-rep tracking, with FINTRX as data partner, on the same producing-advisor lens our State of Financial Advisor Movement used for the first half. Producing means the advisor carried a book, so trainees who washed out and support registrations that lapsed are excluded. Advisors who left and re-registered at Edward Jones within days are excluded too. The number is departures, counted once per person.

Why 396 is a floor, not a total

Our first-half report counted 327 producing departures from Edward Jones between January and June, of whom 265 had re-registered somewhere by the end of June. Those are two different measures of the same population, and keeping them apart matters: 327 is how many left, 265 is how many had already landed when we closed the half.

The nine-month figure is counted on the departure lens, the same one as the 327.

What the last stretch cannot yet tell you is a rate. A registration filing takes roughly six weeks to reach the tracking data, and the effect on recent weeks is not marginal. Through September the tracking set held three Jones departures where our own wider count of the same period held 69. The August and September weeks are largely still in the post. Whatever the nine-month total finally reads, it will be higher than 396, and the honest way to read the recent period is as incomplete rather than as fast or slow.

Read that against the roster. The firm's 10-Q for the quarter ended June 26 reports 20,514 financial advisors, up 1% in a year and down a net 36 over the quarter, and the attrition rate that used to appear in the filings no longer does. Departures at a five-year high in 2025, concentrated among advisors with ten or more years at the firm, were reported by AdvisorHub in March. The 2026 count says that pattern has continued rather than reversed.

Headcount and departures measure different things, and it matters not to confuse them. Edward Jones adds trainees in volume, and in the same nine months it added well over 800 producing registrations, most of them new to the industry. A roster can hold flat while experienced producers leave, because the people arriving and the people leaving are at opposite ends of a career. The departure count is the one that describes the experienced advisor's decision.

Two in three chose independence

Where they went is the second half of the answer, and here we are holding most of the detail for the second-half report, which publishes the full destination ledger by firm and by channel. The shape, though, is already clear.

In the first-half data, 54% of the Edward Jones advisors who departed and re-registered joined an independent broker-dealer, and another 15.5% joined or formed an RIA, about seven in ten in total. The firm-by-firm version of that half, including which independent broker-dealers took the most, is in where do Edward Jones advisors go when they leave. The nine-month set reads about two in three independent, counted across those who have landed rather than across all 396, because some of the most recent leavers have not registered anywhere yet. Only a small minority took another employee seat at a wirehouse, a regional or a bank.

That destination mix is what makes the Edward Jones departure distinctive. At most large firms, leavers scatter across every channel and the story is a market bidding for producers. At Edward Jones, the move is a conversion: from running a practice inside someone else's enterprise to owning one. An Edward Jones advisor already works from a single-advisor office and already functions as a local business owner in everything but the ownership. The 396 made the ownership part explicit. What the partnership actually conveys, and what it does not, is in Edward Jones partnership units, and the reasons the experienced end of the roster reaches this point are in why advisors outgrow Edward Jones.

What the number does and does not say

It says the door is well used, and that the people using it are experienced producers rather than trainees. It says the second half of 2026 is running ahead of the first. And it says that when Edward Jones advisors leave, most of them are choosing a structure they own.

It does not say any particular advisor should leave. Edward Jones remains a strong platform, and for a large share of its advisors the support model is worth more than the equity they give up for it. Plenty of advisors run the numbers on independence every year and decide, correctly, to stay. The count makes one narrower case: the evaluation is worth doing, with real figures, before the year is out.

Those figures are specific to one practice: what the book would be worth under a structure the advisor owns, what the transition would pay and cost, and what the practice would be worth in five or ten years under each path. Our Edward Jones Knowledge Center works through the structural questions particular to the model, and the Edward Jones Movement Report puts the first-half numbers for the firm in one brief. The nine-month ledger, with destinations by channel and by firm and the tenure profile of the leavers, publishes with the second-half report.

For an advisor near retirement the comparison runs against the firm's own sunset terms, which are priced in what the Retirement Transition Plan pays and what it costs. For an advisor who is two years out rather than deciding now, the preparation that makes the eventual decision a better one is in the 18-Month File. And whenever the evaluation does start, who to talk to first covers the order of operations.

Staying can be the right answer. It should be an answer, not a default.

Advisors who want a confidential read on what their practice would be worth under different structures are welcome to request an introduction. Every conversation is held in strict confidence.