Since 2020, experts and journalists have been predicting or declaring a baby boom. It never happened. Now that we have numbers from 2023, it’s clear that despite some ups and downs during COVID-19, America is simply continuing on a downward slope — an ever-worsening baby bust.

When the world locked down in the spring of 2020, plenty of folks predicted a lockdown baby boom — after all, what else were couples going to do while cooped up in the house all day?