How Many People Live in the United States? Population by Year, 2015 to 2026

The US population in 2026: an estimate, a projection and two larger numbers

The most recent official count of people living in the United States is the Census Bureau estimate for 1 July 2025: 341,784,857 residents in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. It comes from the Vintage 2025 population estimates, released on 27 January 2026. There is no measured figure for 2026 yet. The first official estimate for 1 July 2026 will arrive with the next release, Vintage 2026, which on the timing of the last two cycles (19 December 2024 and 27 January 2026) is due around the turn of the year.

For the year itself, the Census Bureau publishes a short term projection. For World Population Day in July 2026 it put the resident population at 342,620,143 on 1 July 2026, the same projection that drives its online Population Clock. That is 835,286 more people than a year earlier, growth of 0.24 percent, which would be the slowest annual increase since the pandemic year to July 2021. If the projected pace of about 2,300 additional residents a day held after July, the population would be close to 342.9 million by late October 2026; that last figure is a BusinessStats calculation, not a Census number.

Growth is flattening: the population added 3.2 million people in the year to July 2024 but is projected to add only about 0.8 million in the year to July 2026.

Search for the 2026 population and you will also see figures near 349 million. They are not wrong, but they measure something different or were produced earlier:

• 342.6 million (Census Bureau, projection for 1 July 2026). Residents of the 50 states and DC, built on the Vintage 2025 estimates and the sharp fall in migration measured in 2025.
• 349 million (Congressional Budget Office, 2026). CBO projects the Social Security area population, which adds residents of US territories such as Puerto Rico, federal employees and service members abroad, and US citizens and other benefit eligible people living overseas. It is a wider population by definition.
• 349.0 million (United Nations, World Population Prospects 2024). A projection for mid 2026 published in July 2024, before the 2025 drop in immigration, and built on the UN Population Division estimates of the base population and migration rather than on the latest Census vintage.

For questions about how many people live in the country today, the Census figures are the reference: they are the series used to allocate federal funds, weight national surveys and calculate per person statistics such as US GDP per head. The rest of this page uses Census data unless a source is named, and labels every projection as such.

US population by year from 2015 to 2026

The table below lists the population on 1 July of each year. Two official series are needed to cover the whole period, and the break between them matters. Figures for 2015 to 2019 come from Vintage 2019, the last set of estimates produced before the 2020 Census. Figures from 2020 onward come from Vintage 2025, which starts from the 2020 Census and has been revised every year since. The 2026 row is a projection.

Change and growth are measured from 1 July of the previous year. The 2015 change is derived from the published 2015 growth rate. Vintage 2019 values are rounded to 0.1 million; 2016 to 2018 growth rates are BusinessStats calculations from those values. No change is shown for 2020 because the two series are not comparable.

Why not simply subtract 2019 from 2020? Because the 2020 Census counted 331,449,281 people on 1 April 2020, more than the Vintage 2019 series had been tracking. Subtracting across the break would show a jump of more than 3 million in a year when growth was in fact slow. The Census Bureau has since published 2010 to 2020 intercensal estimates (first released on 7 November 2024) that smooth this difference across the decade, generally raising the earlier years, so the 2015 to 2019 levels above are best read for their trend rather than as exact counts. Over the full decade the census counts rose from 308,745,538 in 2010 to 331,449,281 in 2020, an increase of 22.7 million or 7.4 percent, the second slowest decade of growth in the history of the census after the 1930s.

Two extremes in five years: growth fell to 0.16 percent in 2021, rose to 0.96 percent in 2024, the fastest since 2006 according to the Census Bureau, and is projected at 0.24 percent in 2026.

Read as a single story, the decade has three phases. From 2015 to 2019 growth slowed every year, from 0.73 percent to 0.48 percent, as births fell and net international migration eased from a peak of about 1,047,000 in the year to July 2016 to about 595,000 in the year to July 2019 (Vintage 2019 figures). The pandemic then pushed growth to 0.16 percent in the year to July 2021: deaths surged, births dipped and borders closed. Between 2022 and 2024 a migration surge more than offset weak natural increase and lifted growth to 0.96 percent, before the 2025 slowdown cut it nearly in half.

Since the Vintage 2025 series begins on 1 April 2020, the population has grown by 10,268,744 people, or 3.1 percent, to July 2025. Net international migration accounts for 8,328,837 of that increase, 81 percent, and natural increase (births minus deaths) for 1,939,907. In other words, four out of every five people added to the US population this decade arrived from abroad on net rather than being born in the country.

The components of change: what added 1.78 million people in 2025

Population change has only three moving parts at the national level: births, deaths and net international migration. In the year from 1 July 2024 to 30 June 2025 the Census Bureau estimates 3,620,461 births and 3,101,603 deaths, a natural increase of 518,858. Net international migration added 1,262,202. Together they account exactly for the national increase of 1,781,060.

Migration still did most of the work: 71 percent of 2025 growth came from net international migration, down from 84 percent a year earlier.

The balance between those parts has changed dramatically. In the year to July 2024, net international migration of 2,734,468 supplied 84 percent of growth. In 2025 its share fell to 71 percent, and the Census Bureau projects about 321,000 for the year to July 2026. With natural increase broadly stable at a little over 500,000 a year, that projection implies that in 2026 births minus deaths (about 514,000) would add more people than net migration, reversing the pattern of 2022 to 2025. That is a BusinessStats reading of the Census projection rather than a published Census statement.

Natural increase itself is small by historical standards. The Census Bureau notes that it ran at 1.6 to 1.9 million a year in the 2000s. Vital statistics from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), which count births and deaths by calendar year, show how it shrank over the period covered here.

The gap nearly closed in 2021: births exceeded deaths by only 200,061, compared with 1.27 million in 2015.

Natural increase calculated by BusinessStats as registered births minus registered deaths.

Two forces are at work. Births fell by 349,563, or 8.8 percent, between 2015 and 2024, and the provisional count for 2025 is 3,606,400, slightly below the 3,628,934 of 2024. The general fertility rate fell to 53.1 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 in 2025, from 53.8 in 2024, and the total fertility rate was 1.60 births per woman in 2024 (1,599.5 per 1,000 women), down from 1.62 in 2023 and well under the 2.1 needed for a generation to replace itself without migration. Deaths, meanwhile, are rising with the size of the older population: even after the pandemic peak of 3,464,231 in 2021 had passed, 2024 still recorded 3,072,666 deaths, 13 percent more than in 2015.

Mortality has nonetheless improved. Life expectancy at birth reached 79.0 years in 2024 (76.5 for men and 81.4 for women), up from 78.4 in 2023, 77.5 in 2022 and 76.4 in 2021, and the age adjusted death rate fell 3.8 percent in 2024 to 722.1 per 100,000. Longer lives slow the rise in deaths but cannot offset an ageing population for long; the age structure behind this is covered in our breakdown of the US population by sex and age.

Net international migration: from 2.7 million to a projected 321,000

Net international migration is the difference between people moving to the United States and people leaving, plus smaller flows such as the movement of service members and migration to and from Puerto Rico. It has been the swing factor of the decade. Vintage 2025 puts it at 2,734,468 in the year to July 2024 and 1,262,202 in the year to July 2025, a decline of 53.8 percent. For the year to July 2026 the Census Bureau projects about 321,000 if current trends continue, and its migration team wrote in January 2026 that the estimates are trending toward negative net migration, which would be the first time in more than 50 years.

Both agencies see the same collapse: each puts 2026 net migration at well under a quarter of the 2024 level.

The two agencies measure migration differently, which is why their numbers do not match year by year. CBO estimated net immigration at 3.5 million in 2023 and 2.3 million in 2024 before a fall to 410,000 in 2025, and it projects 570,000 for 2026. The Census Bureau notes that its estimates were considerably lower than CBO for 2021 to 2023 but very close for 2024 to 2026, especially in 2025. On both measures the turn came in 2025, coinciding with the stricter immigration enforcement and policy changes introduced from January 2025; recorded encounters at the southern border are tracked in our data on US Border Patrol apprehensions and expulsions.

Migration estimates are also the part of the series most likely to be revised. The previous release, Vintage 2024 (19 December 2024), reported net international migration of 2.8 million for 2024 and 2.3 million for 2023. One year later the 2024 figure was revised down to 2,734,468. Revisions of this size change the level of the whole population series, which is why figures quoted from older releases, including earlier versions of this page, can differ by several hundred thousand people.

The South gained two out of every three new residents

All four census regions grew in the year to July 2025, but by very different amounts. The South added 1,171,911 people (0.9 percent), 66 percent of national growth, even though its growth rate fell below 1 percent for the first time since 2021. The West added 263,232 (0.3 percent), the Midwest 244,385 (0.4 percent) and the Northeast 101,532 (0.2 percent), the largest slowdown of any region from 0.8 percent a year earlier.

The South dominates: 1.17 million of the 1.78 million people added nationally lived in the South, where 39 percent of Americans now live.

Domestic migration, people moving between states, explains much of the gap. The South gained 357,790 residents from other regions in 2025, while the Northeast lost 205,552 and the West 168,278. The Midwest recorded a small net domestic gain of 16,040, its first positive year this decade after losses of 175,000 or more in 2021 and 2022, and it was the only region in which every state grew. Over the five years from July 2020 the South has grown by 7.36 million people (5.8 percent), against 1.46 million in the West, 0.78 million in the Midwest and 0.61 million in the Northeast.

Fastest growing states: Texas leads in numbers, South Carolina in percent

Texas added 391,243 people in the year to July 2025, more than any other state and almost twice as many as Florida (196,680). North Carolina (145,907), Georgia (98,540) and South Carolina (79,958) followed. The ten largest gainers together added 1,218,895 residents, 68 percent of national growth, and Texas and Florida alone a third.

Texas is in a class of its own: its gain of 391,243 people was larger than the combined increase of the Northeast and Midwest.

Ranked by growth rate, smaller states move up. South Carolina grew fastest at 1.46 percent, followed by Idaho (1.44 percent), North Carolina (1.32 percent), Texas (1.25 percent) and Utah (1.03 percent). Delaware, Washington, Arizona, Nevada and Tennessee all grew by about 0.9 percent, with Georgia (0.88 percent) just outside the top ten.

Carolinas on top: South Carolina and North Carolina both rank in the top three, driven mainly by people moving in from other states.

Five states lost population: California (-9,465), Hawaii (-2,132), Vermont (-1,858), New Mexico (-1,276) and West Virginia (-1,255). New York grew by only 1,008. Puerto Rico, which is not part of the resident population total, fell by 17,686 to 3.2 million. The losses are small in percentage terms, but they point to a wider pattern: 17 states recorded more deaths than births in 2025, including Florida (-1,333), Pennsylvania (-10,708) and West Virginia (-7,887), so their growth depended entirely on people moving in.

Ten most populous US states, 1 July 2025, with change since 1 July 2020

Rank	State	July 2025	July 2020	Change	Change %
1	California	39,355,309	39,527,808	-172,499	-0.4%
2	Texas	31,709,821	29,237,895	+2,471,926	+8.5%
3	Florida	23,462,518	21,591,325	+1,871,193	+8.7%
4	New York	20,002,427	20,122,262	-119,835	-0.6%
5	Pennsylvania	13,059,432	12,995,576	+63,856	+0.5%
6	Illinois	12,719,141	12,795,348	-76,207	-0.6%
7	Ohio	11,900,510	11,798,534	+101,976	+0.9%
8	Georgia	11,302,748	10,732,595	+570,153	+5.3%
9	North Carolina	11,197,968	10,450,215	+747,753	+7.2%
10	Michigan	10,127,884	10,072,294	+55,590	+0.6%

Download this table (CSV) · Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with credit to Business Stats

Source: US Census Bureau, Vintage 2025 (NST-EST2025-POP). Change calculated by BusinessStats. These ten states hold 54 percent of the US population.

Over five years the shift is clearer still. Texas has added 2.47 million residents since July 2020 and Florida 1.87 million, while California (-172,499), New York (-119,835) and Illinois (-76,207) are smaller than they were in 2020. If these trends hold, Texas will keep narrowing the gap with California, which still has 7.6 million more residents. For how growth is distributed within states, see our ranking of the largest metropolitan areas in the US.

Domestic migration: who is gaining and losing residents to other states

International migration and domestic migration affect states in opposite ways. Florida gained 178,674 people from abroad in 2025, 91 percent of its total growth, but only 22,517 from other states, down from 310,892 in 2022 and 183,646 in 2023. North Carolina was the biggest winner from moves within the country (84,064), ahead of Texas (67,299) and South Carolina (66,622). California lost 229,077 residents to other states and New York 137,586; immigration from abroad (109,278 and 95,634) offset only part of those losses.

California lost the most to other states: its net outflow of 229,077 people was larger than the combined inflow of the top three gaining states.

Thirty one states gained residents through domestic migration in 2025. The Midwest turnaround was visible in Ohio, which went from a loss of 32,482 in 2021 to a gain of 11,926, and in Michigan (from -28,290 to +1,796). Alabama (+23,358) drew more domestic movers than Florida, a sign that the post pandemic rush to the Sun Belt is spreading to cheaper states rather than intensifying.

Estimates, projections and the Population Clock: how to read each number

The Census Bureau counts the population once a decade and estimates it in between. Each annual estimate starts from the most recent census base, 1 April 2020, and adds births and subtracts deaths using vital records, then adds net international migration and, for states, net domestic migration from tax, Medicare and survey data. Each new release is called a vintage and replaces the whole series back to 2020. That is why the July 2024 population is 340,003,797 in Vintage 2025, slightly lower than the figure published a year earlier.

• Estimate: a figure for a past date built from records of births, deaths and migration, such as 341,784,857 on 1 July 2025.
• Projection: a figure for a current or future date based on assumptions, such as 342,620,143 on 1 July 2026 or the CBO path to 2056.
• Population Clock: a display that moves the latest projection forward second by second; it is not a live count.
• Intercensal estimate: a revised series for a past decade that reconciles annual estimates with the next census, such as the 2010 to 2020 series released in November 2024.

Three practical rules follow. Compare years only within the same vintage. Treat any 2026 figure as a projection until the Vintage 2026 estimates are published. And check what population is being counted: residents of the states and DC, the wider Social Security area population used by CBO, or a United Nations estimate built with its own assumptions. Breakdowns by group are published from the same estimates program; see our page on the US population by race and Hispanic origin for the Vintage 2025 detail.

US population projections to 2056 and 2100

Two official forecasts frame the long run, and both are projections, not estimates. The Congressional Budget Office (The Demographic Outlook: 2026 to 2056, published 7 January 2026) projects the Social Security area population to grow from 349 million in 2026 to 357 million in 2035 and 364 million in 2056, an average of 0.3 percent a year over the next decade and 0.1 percent a year from 2037 to 2056. In its projection the population stops growing in 2056.

CBO expects annual deaths to exceed births from 2030, after which net immigration accounts for all population growth. It projects a total fertility rate of 1.58 births per woman in 2026, falling to 1.53 by 2036, life expectancy at birth rising from 79.0 years in 2026 to 82.3 in 2056, and net immigration recovering to about 1.2 million a year from 2035. Compared with its January 2025 outlook, CBO cut its 2055 population by 8 million (2.1 percent), reflecting lower fertility and lower net immigration from 2025 to 2029. It also projects the number of people aged 25 to 64 for each person aged 65 or older to fall from 2.7 now to 2.2.

The Census Bureau 2023 National Population Projections (9 November 2023) look further ahead but were prepared before the recent swings in migration. In the main series the population peaks at about 370 million in 2080 and falls to 366 million by 2100; natural decrease begins in 2038, and older adults outnumber children from 2029. Alternative immigration scenarios show how much depends on that one assumption.

Immigration is the decisive assumption: the gap between the high and zero immigration scenarios for 2100 is 209 million people.

The near term matters as much as the long term. If net international migration stays close to the Census projection of about 321,000, annual growth will hover around a quarter of one percent until births and deaths cross, which CBO places in 2030 and the 2023 Census projections in 2038. After that point any growth depends entirely on immigration, a choice of policy rather than demography. The economic stakes, from the labour force to the size of the economy, are discussed in our overview of economy and politics statistics.

The United States among the most populous countries

The United States is the third most populous country in the world, after India and China. The Census Bureau International Database projects world population at 8.2 billion in July 2026, which puts the US share at about 4.2 percent (BusinessStats calculation). The country is far smaller than India or China, whose population is falling, but larger than any country in Europe. For a comparison with another large high income country, see our data on the UK population. Our page on world population tracks the global total, and the largest countries in the world ranks nations by land area. More national and global data is collected in our population topic overview.

The US population in eight numbers

Questions about the US population