American births outnumbered deaths in 2025 by 519,000 people as population growth rate keeps shrinking

President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration contributed to a year-to-year drop in the nation’s growth rate as the U.S. population reached nearly 342 million people in 2025, according to population estimates released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The 0.5% growth rate for 2025 was a sharp drop from 2024’s almost 1% growth rate, which was the highest in two decades and was fueled by immigration. The 2024 estimates put the U.S. population at 340 million people.

Immigration increased by almost 1.3 million people last year, compared with 2024’s increase of 2.8 million people. If trends continue, the gain from immigrants in mid-2026 will drop to only 321,000 people, according to the Census Bureau, whose estimates do not distinguish between legal and illegal immigration.

In the past 125 years, the lowest growth rate was in 2021, during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, when the U.S. population grew by just 0.16%, or 522,000 people and immigration increased by just 376,000 people because of travel restrictions into the U.S. Before that, the lowest growth rate was just under 0.5% in 1919 at th...