US population growth dipped to lowest ever rate during first year of COVID

By AP 21 December 2021, 5:43 pm

Edit

An ultra-Orthodox Jewish man and woman wheel strollers with sleeping children in them as they cross a street on the Jewish joldiay of Sukkot, Sunday, Oct. 4, 2020, in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says he’s ordering schools in certain New York City neighborhoods closed within a day in an attempt to halt a flare-up of the coronavirus. The governor took the action a day after Mayor Bill de Blasio asked the state for permission to reinstate restrictions on businesses and schools in nine ZIP codes in Brooklyn and Queens where the virus was spreading more quickly. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

Already declining US population growth dipped to its lowest rate since the nation’s founding during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, reveals new census data.

That’s because the coronavirus curtailed immigration, delayed pregnancies and killed hundreds of thousands of US residents. Figures released today by the US Census Bureau show the US grew by only 0.1% with only an additional 392,665 added to the US population, from July 2020 to July 2021.

The population estimates are derived from calculating the number of births, deaths and migration in the US. For the first time, international migration surpassed natural increases from births outnumbering deaths. There was a net increase of almost 245,000 residents from international migration but only around 148,000 from natural increase.