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United States News

The US Population Could Shrink in 2025, For the First Time Ever (derekthompson.org) 123

Posted by msmash from the for-the-record dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: The United States is on the precipice of a historic, if dubious, achievement. If current trends hold, 2025 could be the first year on record in which the US population actually shrinks.

The math is straightforward. Population growth has two sources: natural increase (births minus deaths) and net immigration (arrivals minus departures). Last year, births outnumbered deaths by 519,000 people. That means any decline in net immigration in excess of half a million could push the U.S. into population decline. A recent analysis of Census data by the Pew Research Center found that between January and June, the US foreign-born population fell for the first time in decades by more than one million. While some economists have questioned the report, a separate analysis by the American Enterprise Institute predicted that net migration in 2025 could be as low as negative 525,000. In either case, annual population growth this year could easily turn negative.

The US Population Could Shrink in 2025, For the First Time Ever More | Reply

The US Population Could Shrink in 2025, For the First Time Ever

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  • Without Reading the Article (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nucrash ( 549705 ) on Tuesday September 02, 2025 @10:09AM (#65632580)

    Creating an environment where raising children or providing care for children becomes too expensive coupled with discouraging immigration to this country is a recipe for population decline.

    I live in the Midwest where we have OB/GYN deserts. We have healthcare deserts on top of that. Our life expectancy is decreasing. Maternal mortality and infant mortality is rising due to abortion restrictions.

    What do people think is going to happen?

    • It's all according to plan https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=... [youtube.com]

    • Creating an environment where raising children or providing care for children becomes too expensive

      Aside from daycare, frankly, we Millennials and Gen Z tend to grossly overstate how expensive raising children has to be. The biggest example is college expenses. Our debt might be a problem, but why the Hell is the average person from our generation not rebelling against this expectation? Across the board, colleges are literally so dumbed down that even "good schools" won't even push assignments like reading

      • Re:It's not that bad in most of the US (Score:4, Informative)

        by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Tuesday September 02, 2025 @10:34AM (#65632614) Homepage

        It is that bad in the US.

        My daughter is going to graduate from the University of Toronto next April, with a bachelor's degree in geography and a minor in English, and then a Master's of Education.

        Her total student debt will be $0.00 because Canadian universities are not utter ripoffs, at least not for Canadian students. We started saving for her education when she was born through a Registered Education Savings Plan and it completely covered not only her education, but also her living expenses.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cpurdy ( 4838085 )
          A friend's kid goes to Colgate. The school, not the toothpaste. It's $96k a year for him.

      • Re:It's not that bad in most of the US (Score:5, Interesting)

        by crmarvin42 ( 652893 ) on Tuesday September 02, 2025 @10:44AM (#65632642)

        Why the Hell would you spend $100k on that rather than just saving to gift your kid a down payment on a condo or townhouse?

        Because the lifetime earning potential, even after paying for that devalued degree, is still much higher than can be achieved without a college degree (excluding outliers like tech startup CEOs).

        The idea that you need to go to a "Name Brand" school for all 4 years is, unfortunately, a wide-spread misnomer. But a college degree in the right field is still worth the investment over the lifetime of the student post-graduation.

        I have a PhD, but only paid for 2.5 years of my 12 years of college education with student loans.

        First two years were at a community college, and could be covered out of pocket by my parents (basically my dad just paid my mom his normal child-support check, and she paid most of the course costs with that, with my part time job at a grocery store covering books and fees). Last 2 years of BS did require loans, which were federally backed (not sure how much longer that will be a thing under the current administration). Then I got an MS and PhD in a field where the industry sponsors research at public universities, and their sponsorship is used to pay graduate students course fees and a stipend they can live on. I definitely needed a roommate in grad school, but I was able to get by most of that time without loans. I did need to take out small student loans (again, fed backed) 1 semester due to some unique circumstances such that I could not otherwise make ends meet.

        I was able to pay off my loans in less than 10 years. My wife, OTOH, took 5 years to get her BS - on student loans for everything all 5 years - and we are still paying those off today. I am heavily pushing my own kids to look at community college for the first two years. I expect most will do that. The oldest probably won't, but that is because they are looking to move out of the country (escaping persecution in this country), and don't want to be here a day longer than absolutely necessary. And I don't really blame them, as much as it will hurt to see them move so far away.

        • Because the lifetime earning potential, even after paying for that devalued degree, is still much higher than can be achieved without a college degree

          While this is true, it's also true that if one subtracts the cost of education from lifetime earnings and amortizes that over the time spent getting an education, unpaid overtime, keeping current in one's career field, etc... the average hourly pay is worse than that of a truck driver.

          Yes, you will make more, but you'll give more of your life to your e

          • As someone with advanced degrees, I have to say that is simply not consistent with my experience

            I was basically paid to go to school for 6 years. Getting the degree was my paying job, and cost me almost nothing out-of-pocket (would have been literally zero, if I had not needed a small loan one semester). And now I make north of $250k pre-tax. I actually work far less than 40hr most weeks (generally 25 to 30), which offsets those times when I have to travel for work and rack up more than 40hr if you include

        • What kind of salary does 12 years of tertiary education get you?

          • Should have been 10 years (BS = 4, MS = 2, PhD = 4) but I took an extra year each on MS and PhD. Job market was not great, and so was not in a rush to finish, since they kept paying me and gave me more projects I could publish to work on.

            last salary sure to participated in within my field put the salary range at $150 to $350k, depending on experience, specialty, and role. My first non-academic role was around 100k.

            • So about what I get for software development, with no college degree. Got it.

              • Glad for you, but I didnâ(TM)t say that no one could make good money without a degree. Just that on average pay rates are better with college than without. And to a degree that makes college worth it, as long as you get a degree in the right field

                Software development is not something everyone can do, and pay rates for software devs have been an outlier when compared to the rest of the economy for decades. Though it looks like AI is cutting that back for those who work at big companies. I donâ(TM

      • Why the Hell would you spend $100k on that rather than just saving to gift your kid a down payment on a condo or townhouse?

        Or split that money for a trade school and a house. Oh, and have them get to know where the library is to read some books.

        Entertainment? We live in an absolute golden age of video games where a poor family can cobble together a $400 PC with two Bluetooth controllers that can play 5k+ pirated games from the NES to PS3.

        Or some board games, a deck of cards, and a Hoyle's book of card games.

        We had a big wind storm out here a few years ago. It torn up all kinds of phone lines, flooded buried wires, just left the internet, phone, and cable systems in a mess that took weeks to return to any semblance of normalcy, and years to get back to what it was before. So, for a few weeks there I'd be helping my bro

    • No data backs this up (Score:2, Informative)

      by brunes69 ( 86786 )

      People - especially Millenials and GenZ - like to use this argument all the time. "Why would I want to have kids in this economy".

      The problem is, there is ZERO DATA TO BACK THIS UP.

      Repeat after me: The MORE AFFLUENT a society becomes, the LESS CHILDREN they have. We have hundreds of years of data to back this up. The reasons have to do with

      - Increased choice for women in what they do
      - Increased options for leisure time
      - Decreased concern about "extending the blood line"

    • Creating an environment where raising children or providing care for children becomes too expensive coupled with discouraging immigration to this country is a recipe for population decline.

      I can recall conversations with several people how they dealt with the rising cost of child care. One of the parents stayed home to care for the children. If your job in some office doing something you don't much enjoy, and your paycheck is getting eaten up by costs of daycare, then quit the job. Build some skills on how to save on food and clothing by cooking and sewing. Learn to garden to help with food. Maybe start a home business or work from home doing something that can be done in fits and starts

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by boskone ( 234014 )

      But, according to TFS, births still outnumbered deaths by 1/2 million "Last year, births outnumbered deaths by 519,000 people"

      So the reduction in population is just due to lower immigration and greater outmigration, not due to a negative birth rate.

      In fact, if our country of 330M were to grow by 500k/year net, it seems like this would be a small but positive growth rate.

      If we get our net population growth to 5-6M/year, I would argue that's sustainable, so we would need either some net immigration or better

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by shanen ( 462549 )

      Mostly agree with not reading the article, but...

      I think the root of the problem is that young people have to compete for jobs, especially when they are just entering the work force, and the best way to compete is by accepting less money. Too little money for a family, and for many, perhaps most people, by the time they have an established career and start making enough money to pay for a family it has become too late. (Or am I projecting again?)

      Not just an American problem, by the way. But perhaps for the

    • I was alive then. So what if the Midwest or other population declines? Fewer people reduces need. As people settled areas we can UNsettle them.

      The solution/inevitable response is internal migration to maintain viable populations, not perpetually adding meatbags merely so a decreasing population are not inconvenienced by relocation.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      What do people think is going to happen?

      Most people do not think.

  • Personally, I think (Score:5, Insightful)

    by evanh ( 627108 ) on Tuesday September 02, 2025 @10:22AM (#65632598)

    a decline is a good thing. The planet is overpopulated. Better to shrink through lower birthrates than making up excuses for wars.

    • Re:Personally, I think (Score:4, Interesting)

      by brunes69 ( 86786 ) <slashdot@keirBOYSENstead.org minus berry> on Tuesday September 02, 2025 @10:35AM (#65632620)

      Sounds good in theory - except that when the population pyramid (ie, more young people than old) collapses, it leads to major unrest in society as no one is there to support the elderly who can't work.

      Unless we can backfill the economy with robotics, we are all screwed.

      • Keeping the elderly healthy and at work changes the population shrink problem dramatically. And the longer you work the more likely you'll die on the job instead of in a nursing home.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Zocalo ( 252965 )
          Several countries in Europe are taking this tack; a gradual rise in the retirement age before you qualify for the state pension. You could have a private pension and retire earlier on that, but many people are too cash-strapped to make any meaningful payments into a private scheme, and especially so when they are young enough for the plan to hopefully accrue a good deal of compounded investment returns.

          In theory, it should help maintain the size of the labour pool, ensure older - and typically higher ea

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            The problem with raising the pension age is that we are reaching the point where people are realistically never going to retire, they will die at their desk or become medically unable to work first. Even if they qualify for the state pension, it's often so low that they need to keep working anyway.

            The real apocalyptic problems will start as large numbers of people who were unable to buy a home reach retirement and the government either has to pay their rent or give them social housing.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by nealric ( 3647765 )

        Japan is 10-20 years ahead of the U.S. in terms of the population pyramid. It hasn't created social unrest. It's more social stagnation. Fewer ambitious young people pushing new ideas and starting new companies in favor of stodgy old companies that have trouble keeping up. Many of the elderly continue to work way past traditional retirement age.

      • A reasonably slow population decline wouldn't have such problems, but that's not what happens when a society suddenly makes 2 generations too poor to afford kids and also smart enough to realize it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        The politicians are there to support the elderly, because the elderly vote habitually and young people don't.

        That's why e.g. in the UK we have pensioners protected by things like the Triple Lock on the state pension (it goes up by the highest of inflation, average wages, or 2.5%), and the burden of funding it placed on younger people. We have policies that push house prices up, because older people own houses and like getting richer, while younger people can't afford them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rwrife ( 712064 )
      Our entire society (globally not just in the US) is built around population growth, without it, lots of our institutions will collapse.

      • "lots of our institutions will collapse."

        What's not to like?

      • Re:Personally, I think (Score:4, Insightful)

        by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 ) <gameboyrmh.gmail@com> on Tuesday September 02, 2025 @06:18PM (#65634164) Journal

        It's not society, society doesn't care too much about population growth, it's the economic system. Capitalist economic systems require infinite compounding growth in a finite world (so that capitalists can at any time turn their money into more money without doing any work), and so far the main driver of that growth has been population growth.

        In a related problem, most pension/retirement schemes work like a long-running intergenerational ponzi scheme that will only avoid collapse as long as the next generation is bigger or at least wealthier than the last, and now we have two generations that are smaller and poorer.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by nucrash ( 549705 )

      I am going to agree with you on some level. Yes, economy bad, but then again, we built a terrible economy with the idea that the population wouldn't stop growing. Unless we get additional places to move to, off of Earth, that isn't going to happen.

    • Population decline is good news *if* the population decline is gradual, IMO.

      I agree that this planet is currently wildly overpopulated - the only people that a population decline is a major threat to is the 1%.

    • The planet is overpopulated.

      By whet metric is the planet overpopulated?

      Better to shrink through lower birthrates than making up excuses for wars.

      I the goal is a smaller population then I'd agree that lower birthrates is preferable to killing people. The question is then, is population decline a good thing? We'd not want population to grow too quickly, that's like likely good for the well-being of a future generation. We don't want population to decline too quickly either, we are seeing how that's playing out in many Asian nations.

      I'm agreeing with Elon Musk on this, there's still too few people. Elon M

  • Net immigration (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Captain pedantic here. There is no such thing as "net immigration". The words you're looking for are "net migration"; the difference between immigration and emmigration.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      emmigration.

      Captain even-more-pedantic here. Emigration has one 'm". :)

  • This isn't really a big problem. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nightflameauto ( 6607976 ) on Tuesday September 02, 2025 @10:34AM (#65632618)

    We've needed to reduce population for a while. The problem, such as it is, is that we have predicated our economy on the idea of forever growth always. And when the population decreases, or even slows its increase, it's nearly impossible to continue growing the economy. Forever growth isn't really an overall positive either, but we've insisted that it is because people like to see those numbers going up. And the only way to continue to make that happen as the actual economy shrinks to fit population decline is through massive inflation. Decrease the value of the dollar so that it takes many more dollars to do the same amount of economic moving and shaking.

    Or we could start to analyze ourselves and accept that forever growth is akin to cancer, and maybe we shouldn't be focused on turning our economy into cancer. Maybe we should focus on making the economy serve the people, instead of the other way around?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rwrife ( 712064 )
      Everything we do is built around the fact that we planned to have more people tomorrow than we do today, when the opposite is true, now what?

      • Everything we do is built around the fact that we planned to have more people tomorrow than we do today, when the opposite is true, now what?

        Mandatory copies handed to every politician of this [wikipedia.org], followed by reading comprehension tests for the material.

    • Re:This isn't really a big problem. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by groobly ( 6155920 ) on Tuesday September 02, 2025 @12:44PM (#65633034)

      Growing the economy is not the good that it may appear. What matters for the population, rather than corporations, is growing per capita GDP, which is a measure of average wealth. If you import tons of low productivity people, you increase total GDP, but *decrease* per capita GDP making the average person's slice of the pie smaller. Corporations sell more product, but the average person leads a poorer life.

      • Re:This isn't really a big problem. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by nightflameauto ( 6607976 ) on Tuesday September 02, 2025 @01:05PM (#65633124)

        Growing the economy is not the good that it may appear. What matters for the population, rather than corporations, is growing per capita GDP, which is a measure of average wealth. If you import tons of low productivity people, you increase total GDP, but *decrease* per capita GDP making the average person's slice of the pie smaller. Corporations sell more product, but the average person leads a poorer life.

        America has deprioritized people over concern for corporate profits time and again. People as individuals do not matter to America. What matters is corporate profit.

        I don't like it, and think it's a testament to the fact that our society has its priorities all sorts of wrong, but it's not like us unimportant folks can influence policy any longer. You have to have money to influence policy, and if you have money, your main concern is going to be making sure you get more money. While it would be nice to see that trend reverse, I'm not sure how you go about that when literally every power position is bought and paid for outright by the very people who want the system to stay as it is. Unless you want to talk about blood. And I don't think our society has that in us any longer. It's like the only part of civilized society that seems to have stuck in the American Psyche: no violence against the owner class and the government officials that rule as their operatives.

      • Per capita GDP isn't even a good measure because it isn't a measure of average wealth at all, it's a measure of total national income with no regard for how big the average person's slice of the pie is at all. I think what you're looking for is median household income or median personal income.

    • We've needed to reduce population for a while.

      Absolutely not. The US has a massive amount of room. And more people means more ideas, more new thoughts, more efficiencies from economies of scale, and more comparative advantage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage [wikipedia.org]. A smaller US is a poorer, weaker US.

      • Absolutely not. The US has a massive amount of room. And more people means more ideas, more new thoughts, more efficiencies from economies of scale, and more comparative advantage.

        While the planet could support more people with properly managed resources, this idea that innovation comes from pulling the genetic one-armed-bandit enough times to hit a few jackpots and pop out a few Einsteins is ludicrous. Einsteins aren't born, they're made and enabled. If you want new ideas and innovation, support and empower the people who are already there to do it. We already have lots of people who could generate new ideas including lots of potential Einsteins, they just don't have the time or con

        • The vast majority of innovations don't happen from the Einsteins or Terry Taos but from regular slightly bright people who are working hard. So yes, in that sense, population matters. It is true that there are a lot of people spending time on junk like making Facebook more addictive, but there's no obvious move to reduce that at all.

    • From the old-fashioned "wealth == gold" argument, a lower population automatically creates more wealth per person. Real estate obeys that too.

  • Check footnote one, author "thinks" that the population should have been counted differently in 1917 because it did fall that year. Pick a metric and stick with it otherwise your words fall upon the ground in pieces like simple feces.

    • Considering that's around the late stages of world war one, do military deployments count as emigration? It's not supposed to be permanent.

  • Another way of saying this is that the number of US citizens is increasing, while the total number of people in the country may decrease.

  • It is inevitable (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jovius ( 974690 ) on Tuesday September 02, 2025 @11:29AM (#65632784)

    It is possible to list a myriad of reasons for the population decline, and therein lies the answer, too. The more freedom people have, the fewer people choose to have children. There is no magic bullet to fix it without dismantling a free society. Reduced population growth is a feature of a more advanced human civilisation.

    The decline of the world population is inevitable, and it would be wise to prepare for that while providing support structures for children too.

    Countries will end up competing for immigrants. My kind wish is that nationalism would start to crumble, but it might not be pretty.

    • Re:It is inevitable (Score:4, Interesting)

      by LDA6502 ( 7474138 ) on Tuesday September 02, 2025 @11:48AM (#65632828)

      There is no magic bullet to fix it without dismantling a free society.

      And dismantling our free society is exactly what conservatives are advocating to reverse the low birth rates in the USA, as documented in the Project 2025 gameplan.

      What is to be seen is if reversing modern family planning options and cultural norms will be negated by the inevitable brain drain that comes from living in a fascist police state.

  • Microplastics and forever chemicals. I'm sure with the collapse of any kind of regulation over industry there will be more reasons.

  • Good (Score:4, Informative)

    by groobly ( 6155920 ) on Tuesday September 02, 2025 @12:39PM (#65633020)

    US population is already too high. What matters is not population size, but population productivity.

  • Does the AEI study include undocumented people in the total? If they did before and don't now or vice versa, that sounds like a bogus study to me.
    And then there's the question of whether or not shrinking is a good thing. On the one hand, every business that's subscription-based and there aren't too many of those these days is going to have a problem. On the other hand, the national parks won't be overrun by what could be described as the fragrance counter at Macy's.

  • Perpetual growth is a road to ruin. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by couchslug ( 175151 ) on Tuesday September 02, 2025 @01:50PM (#65633304)

    The US added over a hundred million people in my lifetime.
    It is now crowded, oppressive and getting worse.

    Land is often unaffordable not because of investors, but because of demand from which they profit. The US has no need to grow into a miserable third world hive, but elite greed drives this toxic progression.

    Using an aging population as excuse to promote importing more people is absurd. Old people end and when they do the problem of useless mouths to feed ends with them.

    As in the rest of nature, individual death unburdens the group, improving quality of life for others before they die in turn.

  • Last year, births outnumbered deaths by 519,000 people. That means any decline in net immigration in excess of half a million could push the U.S. into population decline.

    2nd sentence does not make that much sense, does it? "That means any decline in *net migration* in excess of half a million [...]" would do, I guess.

    • Not even that. I would make sense if it said "net migration in excess of half a million".
      If it were over half a million, a decline of half a million would be zero.
      Derek Thompson isn't a very good writer, judging by the language in the article. A reporter really should use the correct words.

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