The U.S. added fewer than 400,000 people last year. The last year with fewer than 1 million new people was 1937.
The U.S. population grew slower than ever last year, according to estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. A combination of dropping birth rates, higher deaths rates amid the COVID pandemic and limited immigration meant the country added only 392,665 people between July 2020 and July 2021. That 0.1% increase is the lowest recorded since the nation was founded in 1776. Before this year, the last time the U.S. failed to add 1 million people was 1937, the heart of the Great Depression. The U.S. growth rate has been declining for years, but the latest drop even surprised experts. “I was expecting low growth but nothing this low,” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. For the first time in recorded American history, the U.
