As recently as 2009, the scolds were still warning us about a world with too many Americans. The Census Bureau then predicted a U.S. population of 400 million by 2050, with an expected 2025 population of 357 million.
“Given that Americans, per person, produce many times more carbon dioxide emissions than people in developing countries,” the New York Times warned in 2009, “the growth in the United States has added significance for climate projections.”
The numbers are in, and we’re far short of that projection: We barely grew in 2025, and ended up just below 342 million, according to the latest Census Bureau figures.
How does the major media handle the issue? “U.S. population growth sputters as immigration stalls,” said Axios. “U.S. Population Growth Slows Sharply as Immigration Numbers Plunge,” the New York Times blared.
“The immigration numbers plunged by more than 50 percent from the previous year, under the aggressive anti-immigration policies of President Trump,” the New York Times explained.
Immigration minus emigration in 2025 equaled 1.3 million, compared to the 2.7 million in 2024, the final year of Joe Biden’s open-borders experiment. But to put it in historic context: last year’s 1.3 million net immigration is still more than the pre-Biden peak, which was 1.24 million in 2016.
In other words, net immigration in 2025 almost returned to normal levels.
The bigger story was the decline in new babies. More American babies were aborted in 2025 than in any recent year. Also, the birth rate in the U.S. has fallen almost every year since 2007. In 2007, 4.3 million babies were born in the U.S., while in 2025 the number was about 3.6 million, the lowest total since 1979.
So here’s another way to look at it: Former President Joe Biden increased our population by importing a record number of illegal immigrants. Donald Trump has not reversed the baby bust, but has reverted immigration to the mean.
This isn’t a happy story. In 17 states, the census numbers show, more people died in 2025 than were born. New data from the Congressional Budget Office suggests that the U.S. will hit the more-deaths-than-births line in 2030, and thus only immigration will keep our population flat or growing.
THE NEW GOLDEN AGE OF LOBBYING
When will the U.S. population begin shrinking? On that score, you cannot rely on the official projections, because they all assume a rebound in birth rates, although all experience shows that low birth rates don’t self-correct — they instead lead to even lower birth rates.
A realistic guess is that the U.S. population will start shrinking before 2050. This means that if you are younger than 60, you’ll experience the peak of America’s population. And it’s all downhill from there.
