The US Is Flirting With Its First-Ever Population Decline

The U.S., whose population the Census Bureau did not expect to start shrinking until 2081, may record its first-ever decline as early as this year because of the Trump administration's accelerating immigration crackdown. Census data released in late January showed US population growth slowed to just 0.5% in the year prior to July 2025 -- the lowest rate since the pandemic -- as net migration fell to 1.3 million from a peak of 2.7 million the year before.

Census experts now expect net migration to drop to only 316,000 in the year prior to July 2026 and say the country is "trending toward negative net migration." A joint study by researchers at the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution estimates that 2026 net immigration could range from a gain of 185,000 to a loss of 925,000. Births exceeded deaths by just 519,000 in the most recent period, a surplus the Congressional Budget Office expects to vanish by 2030. At the low end of the AEI/Brookings range, the overall US population would shrink by more than 400,000 -- something that has never happened since the country began taking censuses in 1790.

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