We advance a novel method for the finite-temperature effective action for nonequilibrium quantum fields and find the QED effective action in time-dependent electric fields, where charged pairs evolve out of equilibrium. The imaginary part of the effective action consists of thermal loops of the Fermi-Dirac or Bose-Einstein distribution for the initial thermal ensemble weighted with factors for vacuum fluctuations. And the real part of the effective action is determined by the mean number of produced pairs, vacuum polarization, and thermal distribution. The mean number of produced pairs is equal to twice the imaginary part. We explicitly find the finite-temperature effective action in a constant electric field.
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