According to the latest data published by the Census Bureau, the US population growth rate will be only 0.5% in 2025, down from 1% in 2024 (with an increase of 3.3 million people), which was the highest rate in 20 years and was driven by immigration. The overall population is estimated at 341.8 million in 2025, compared to approximately 340 million in 2024.
Growth was concentrated in the southern states (such as Texas with +1.2%), Florida (+0.8%), South Carolina (+1.5%) and North Carolina (+1.3%), Georgia (+0.9%) and Tennessee (+0.9%), as well as Idaho (+1.4%), and Utah, Arizona, and Nevada with around 1% growth.
States experiencing demographic decline or near decline include California with 0% growth, New Mexico (-0.1%), Louisiana and Mississippi with 0.1%, West Virginia (-0.1%) and Vermont (-0.3%). The same is true for Alaska (0.1%) and Hawaii, which is in decline (-0.1%).
Over the past 125 years, the lowest growth rate ever recorded was during the COVID-19 pandemic, when it reached only 0.16%. Before that, the lowest rate was during the Spanish flu in 1919, at 0.5%.
The crackdown by the Trump administration therefore had a direct impact on population growth. Immigration fell from 2.8 million in 2024 (84% of the population increase) to 1.3 million in 2025, according to the Census Bureau, whose estimates do not distinguish between legal and illegal immigration. According to Eric Jensen, senior researcher at the Census Bureau, the data “reflects recent trends we are seeing in migration patterns: fewer arrivals and more departures.”
The good news is that births exceeded deaths in 2025, with a net differential of 519,000 births, which is in line with the trend in the birth-death ratio since 2023.
In Florida
Florida is impacted by the decline in growth, with a drop in the number of immigrants from 411,000 to 178,000, and a decline in newcomers from other states, from 64,000 in 2024 to 22,000 in 2025, as the cost of real estate and home insurance has become more expensive in the Sunshine State. Overall, all of the southern US states, which usually experienced strong population growth in the 2020s, have slowed down, with only 1.1 million people, compared to 1.7 million in 2024.
Impacts on the labor market
The slowdown in population growth could impact the labor market, especially in industries that rely heavily on immigrant labor. And if the trend continues at the same pace, the annual gain from immigrants could fall to just 320,000 (compared to 1.3 million in 2025), which could slow economic growth and accelerate population aging.
It should be noted that the Census Bureau lost 15% of its staff last year, and the release of the figures was delayed due to the government shutdown in the fall of 2025. Nevertheless, the figures appear to be reliable, according to William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution.
