The Congressional Budget Office now projects 364 million U.S. residents in 2050, well below its pre-pandemic estimate of 389 million, as lower immigration, pandemic-era mortality and weakening birth trends reshape the nation’s outlook.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
WASHINGTON — The United States is still expected to add residents for decades, but the pace of expansion has been revised sharply downward as declining birth rates and a major slowdown in immigration alter the country’s demographic trajectory.
The nation’s population stands at an estimated 349 million in 2026 and is projected to reach 364 million by 2050, according to Congressional Budget Office data.
That latest estimate is 25 million lower than the forecast issued in 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic, when the CBO projected that the U.S. population would rise to 389 million by midcentury.
Although current projections indicate that the population could continue increasing beyond 2100, the expected growth through 2050 has weakened substantially over the past several years.
The downward adjustment reflects a combination of pandemic-related deaths, persistently low fertility and changes in international migration.
Population estimates fell during the coronavirus pandemic as the United States recorded elevated excess mortality. Forecasts were repeatedly reduced as the demographic consequences of those deaths became clearer.
After the pandemic subsided, projections temporarily moved higher as expectations for population growth improved. That trend did not hold, however, with forecasts issued in 2025 and 2026 turning downward again.
The 2026 projection is the lowest among the recent series of fluctuating estimates. One of the principal reasons was a historic decline in net international migration during 2025.
The immigration slowdown carries particular significance because births are no longer expected to provide enough natural population growth to offset deaths.
Immigration has contributed more to annual U.S. population gains than net births since the second year of the coronavirus pandemic.
Net births, calculated by subtracting deaths from births, fell sharply during that period and have not returned to their previous role as the main driver of national population growth.
The CBO expects the number of U.S. births relative to deaths to turn negative around 2030. Once deaths begin exceeding births, immigration would become the only remaining source of overall population growth.
A sustained reversal in the nation’s low birth rate is considered increasingly unlikely, making future population estimates especially sensitive to federal immigration policy and migration patterns.
The country is also expected to become considerably older as growth slows.
In 2026, the United States has approximately 2.7 working-age adults between 25 and 64 for every person age 65 or older. By 2056, that balance is projected to fall to 2.2 working-age adults for every older American.
The shift will occur as more members of the baby boom generation move beyond age 65 and younger generations remain comparatively smaller.
That changing ratio means fewer working-age people will be available to support a growing elderly population through payroll taxes and other government revenues.
The demographic transition is expected to increase pressure on federal safety-net programs, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, as more Americans qualify for retirement and health benefits while the relative size of the workforce declines.
The revised estimates do not indicate an immediate national population contraction. Instead, they point to a United States that continues growing more slowly, depends increasingly on immigration for that growth and faces mounting fiscal challenges from an aging population.
Original article
Comments