It’s working. The Trump administration’s sweeping effort to curb immigration, I mean.
New estimates from the Census Bureau released on Tuesday showed population growth for the US was just 0.52% in the 12-month period from July 1, 2024 to July 1, 2025, a window which captures the tail-end of the Biden presidency and the first several months of Trump’s second term.
That was just half the prior year’s rate and among the slowest on record. The figure below gives you a sense of the brake-slam.
The 1.8 million overall gain pushed the total population to 341.8 million midway through last year, the data showed.
Note that 2021’s rate — 0.16% — was the smallest percentage gain in the history of the country. That year’s figures were impacted heavily by COVID deaths and pandemic control measures, which curtailed the flow of people across borders.
There was no ambiguity about what caused the most recent slowdown. “With births and deaths remaining relatively stable compared to the prior year, the sharp decline in net international migration is the main reason for the slower growth rate we see today,” a Census Bureau statistician said, on the way to describing “a historic decline” in the NIM figure.
The figure above shows you what the bureau means by “historic.” On the current trajectory, the “ins minus outs” count would fall even further in 2026. If the projection for this year’s ultimately borne out, 2026’s NIM tally would count among the lowest in living memory.
I doubt the Trump administration will be satisfied with the precipitous decline in the 2025 dataset. 1.3 million may be down 52% from the record-high notched the prior year, but if you’re a Stephen Miller type, that’s still 1.299 million too many.
I can only assume Trump’s been told this countless times over the past decade, but I’m compelled to state the obvious: If the population’s aging quickly and the social safety net’s underfunded, you should think twice about introducing draconian curbs on a driver of working-age population growth.
Immigrants do pay taxes. Before you set about limiting immigration or choking it off altogether, you should have a plan to increase the fertility rate, otherwise you’re risking a smaller tax base. (Trump can ask his “good friend” Xi Jinping about this if he mistrusts his own demographers.)
I understand why a lot of Americans are hostile to immigrants (note that understanding it isn’t the same thing as sympathizing with it), but this is very basic stuff, folks. If you get to a place where immigration’s the primary driver of population growth (versus native-born births), you have to tread cautiously on immigration policy otherwise you’re going to end up with a shortage of workers and not enough tax revenue.
One demographer who spoke to the Times on Tuesday put it as a (rhetorical) question: “What will happen to the population if we go to negative immigration?”
Not to worry. Robots, humanoid or otherwise, will substitute for people. Isn’t Musk telling us there’s no need to save for retirement, the AI-enhanced future is so bountiful?
Or, if you can’t afford to stop working two jobs, retirement really isn’t a thing.
Lady Liberty doing the Heisman is impressive. What is going on with the 1/3 billion of us – not so much.
Continuous population decline can be a sign of the general decline of a society.
H-Man, based on our birth rate in the US, if we don’t have immigration we lose and become a Japan. A bunch of old people living off of interest rate obligations sucking up resources and contributing nothing. There will be a day, not to far into the future, that cutting your lawn will cost what you pay for healthcare (which is another topic for another day). Anyone for a white coquina yard?
We are older and getting more so as ICE keeps immigrants away. They are younger too and pay taxes for years. The U.S. owes moe to outsiders than any other country in the world. So there is no clipping coupone. We just pay the world not like Jaan or Norwayes – just the oppisite.
A useful estimate of GDP growth is workforce growth + productivity growth. If workforce growth is zeroed out, GDP growth will be entirely dependent on productivity growth…not a great place to be.
Nerd Reich wants the immigrants out because they want to sell you robots instead.
Those radishes are about to get expensive.
$10,000 tax credit, plus free healthcare for the child for 10 years, plus free food for the child, for 10 years, plus free rent for the child, for 10 years, for anyone who has a baby.
That’s what it’s coming to. The incentives have to be right. Americans are capable of making babies, in vast numbers, if the incentives are right.