US Census Bureau officials report that 2021 was the first time since 1937 that the US population has grown by less than one million people.
WASHINGTON, DC – New Years Day 2022 has dawned on an America whose population continues to grow.
But not by much.
In their year-end review, US Census Bureau officials reported that “America’s population grew at a slower rate in 2021 than any other year since the nation’s founding.”
“The year 2021 is the first time since 1937 that the US population has grown by less than a million people,” according to Luke Rogers, chief of the population estimates branch of the Census Bureau.
Rogers explained that the US population has only grown 0.1% in the past 12 months because “births and net international migration have declined as deaths have increased… This trend has been amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in historically slow population growth in 2021.
The Rogers Census Branch estimates that the U.S. population only grew by 706,899 people in 2021, bringing the total population to 332,403,650 as of Jan. 1, 2022.
Slow population growth has been a trend in America for more than a decade due to declining fertility among young people, increasing mortality among the aging population of the United States, limitations on immigration and , more recently, deaths from COVID-19.
But America’s population grew at an even slower rate in 2021 than in the years 1918 and 1919, when the country battled a deadly flu pandemic and fought in World War I.
However, due to the regional economy and employment conditions, the slow growth trend over the past year has not been felt evenly across the country.
From July 1, 2020 to July 1, 2021, ten states, mostly Western, experienced population growth that far exceeds the national rate for 2021.
These states were Idaho (2.9% growth); Utah (1.7 percent); Montana (1.7 percent); Arizona (1.7 percent); South Carolina (1.4%); Delaware (1.2%); Texas (1.1%); Florida (1.0%); Nevada (1.0%) and South Dakota (0.9%).
Ten states with net declines in their populations were the District of Columbia (a 2.9 percent decline); New York (minus 1.6%); Illinois (minus 0.9 percent); Hawaii (minus 0.7 percent); California (minus 0.7 percent); Louisiana (minus 0.6 percent); Massachusetts (minus 0.5%); North Dakota (minus 0.5 percent); West Virginia (minus 0.4%); and Mississippi (minus 0.2 percent).