Eve is here. Wolf Richter is right to highlight the declining, and potentially even shrinking, rate of population growth as a major problem. The rationale for immigration liberalization in developed countries is the need to maintain population growth, or at least prevent population decline, in order to promote economic growth. There are two things that generate economic growth: population growth and increased productivity. Population growth drives overall demand for housing and many demands that depend on household composition, such as the purchase of durable goods. The prospect of stagnant population levels has also raised concerns about so-called population decline, as the country’s population ages and there are not enough young workers and breadwinners to support them.
Americans have become so accustomed to the large influx of immigrants each year that many do not realize that the emergence of modern immigration is a relatively new development, following large historical waves of immigration. Just after 2000, I surveyed top financial services firms about trends that could impact the way they approached marketing (in effect, my role was to sort through all sorts of projections and categorize what was healthy). One of the big trends was the completely unexpected growth of the U.S. population in the 1990s. Demographers predict that the U.S. consumer base will stagnate or shrink as birth rates fall below replacement levels, similar to those in Europe and Asia. It was shocking when the 2000 census showed a marked increase in illegal and otherwise poorly captured immigrants, primarily from Latin America. Because Hispanic women had children at above-replacement rates, this provided secondary support for U.S. population growth.
Note that for the health of the planet, societies need to learn how to cope with shrinking population levels. However, this major shift in the United States is unlikely to lead to serious efforts to address this challenge.
Written by Wolf Richter, editor of Wolf Street. First appearance: Wolf Street
“Currently, the NIM estimate is [Net International Migration = immigration minus emigration] Net migration tends to be negative. If these trends continue, this will be the first time in more than 50 years that the United States will experience net negative immigration,” the Census Bureau said in comments on population estimates released today.
In the 12 months ending July 1, 2025, net international immigration (immigrants minus immigrants) fell by more than half to 1.26 million, but this period still represents a mix of six months of Biden’s immigration policy and six months of President Trump’s immigration policy.
The Census Bureau announced today that “if current trends continue,” the NIM is “projected to decline further to approximately 321,000 people” in the 12 months ending July 1, 2026. And it could turn negative the following year (green line = immigrants born outside the US, brown line = immigrants born outside the US, bold blue line = international net immigration).
The total population of the United States increased by 1.78 million people (+0.5%) in the 12 months ended July 1, 2025, to 341.78 million people.
The increase was the result of 1.26 million net immigrants from six months of Biden’s immigration policy combined with six months of Trump’s immigration policy, and 519,000 due to natural increase (births minus deaths).
According to today’s Census Bureau projections, the total population is expected to grow by only 756,600 people (+0.2%) in the 12 months ending in July 2026 (shown in light blue in the chart below).
However, the report warned that because projections are always based on trends over the past 12 months, trends up to July 1, 2025, including the six months of Biden’s immigration policies, and a full 12 months of President Trump’s policies could result in even lower population growth for the 12 months to July 1, 2026 (to be announced in December 2026). Census Bureau chart:
The Census Bureau had struggled to account for problems that led to a sudden and large wave of immigration under the Biden administration, which caused the Bureau to significantly underreport population growth at the time. However, in December 2024, the country significantly revised its population estimates upward using new data sources, including ICE and the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs and Refugee Processing Centers. The U.S. population grew by nearly 9 million people in the three years ending in December 2024, according to further revised data released today.
Then, in 2025, there was a crackdown on illegal immigration, deportations, and “voluntary deportations,” and further tightening of legal immigration, again creating a sudden and major change that even the new data sources from the previous year couldn’t capture. One problem was that the data source could not track people who left the United States and no longer lived there.
So the Census Bureau needed to find additional data sources to track people who are no longer in the United States.
“Measuring immigration presents unique challenges because these people are not in the U.S. to complete surveys or the census. Additionally, there are few mechanisms to remove these people’s records from administrative data after they immigrate.”
New sources of immigration data include repatriation data from the Department of Homeland Security and data from the Mexican National Occupational and Employment Survey. The data included a question about the respondent’s year-ago residence (ROYA) and produced estimates for Mexican-born and US-born people (immigrants) whose ROYA was in the United States but currently resides in Mexico.
The following graph from the Census Bureau shows the current population of Mexico living in the United States one year ago (blue = Mexican-born, brown = US-born, dotted line = upper limit of Mexican survey data:
The Census Bureau also conducts another monthly survey, the Current Population Survey (CPS), for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which the BLS uses for labor force data. This study includes data on the foreign-born population of the United States.
Today, the Census Bureau presented trends through July 1, 2025, accounting for the first six months of the Trump administration’s immigration policy.
The foreign-born population per CPS decreased by 1.4 million people over the past six months, from 53.3 million in January 2025 to 51.9 million in June 2025.
But the Census Bureau warned:
“Changes in the foreign-born population in the survey over time may be indicative of immigration, but may also reflect survey nonresponse, coverage errors, or the effects of population control.”
It said the CPS is based on a “relatively small sample size” compared to the American Community Survey (ACS), “particularly the foreign-born population.” ACS is the Census Bureau’s vast repository of census data.
And it said:
“We have traditionally used ACS data instead of CPS data to estimate the size and geographic distribution of the foreign-born population. However, CPS provides more up-to-date estimates using monthly files, making it a valuable benchmark to inform the Vintage 2025 Immigration Survey.”
It’s very important for jobs and housing.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics plans to incorporate these new population data into employment-related data and extrapolate the findings to the overall U.S. population. This affects total employment, labor force, unemployment, participation rate, employment-to-population ratio, etc.
The second half of 2025 will see private sector nonfarm payrolls growth slow while federal and state governments cut jobs. However, the unemployment rate remains very low, the number of applications for unemployment insurance remains very low, and average hourly wages continue to rise steadily.
Many observers, including those of us here and at the Fed, point out that one reason for the low private sector employment growth, coupled with low unemployment and solid wage pressures, must be a dramatic slowdown in population growth in 2025, especially in the second half of the year when new immigration policies were in place.
And the housing market will feel it, too. The construction industry builds an average of 1.45 million new homes per year, including condominiums, rental homes, single-family homes, and multi-family homes. Across the United States, each housing unit has an average of 2.5 people living in it. Therefore, if population growth is very slow, or even slower than predicted, demand in the housing market will further decline as new supply emerges. Bring us a new surprise! Massive new supply and slow population growth could solve many problems in the housing market.
And personal consumption is losing its driving force behind population growth. However, inflation-adjusted consumer spending continues to grow at a steady pace on the back of rising incomes and large capital gains.
