David J. Bier
New US Census Bureau statistics show that, despite a significant increase in immigration during President Biden’s term in office, the immigrant share of the US population grew more slowly over the past decade than during any decade since the 1970s. By 2024, the immigrant population total—about 50 million—had only just returned to the trend seen before the first Trump administration.
- In 2024, the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) estimated that there were 50.2 million immigrants, legal and illegal, in the United States.
- In 2024, the share of the US population who were immigrants, legal or illegal, was 14.8 percent, meaning that 85.2 percent were natural-born citizens.
- From 2014 to 2024, the immigrant share grew at its slowest pace—just 1.5 percentage points—for any decade dating back to the 1970s.
- Since 2006, effectively all immigrant population growth has come from Latin America (45 percent), Africa (13 percent), and Asia (42 percent).
- The immigrant share has only just tied its record high in 2024, despite the US currently experiencing the slowest total population growth in its history.
- Without high rates of immigration going forward, the total US population will decline.
Figure 1 shows the Census Bureau’s estimates of the total immigrant population from 2000 to 2024. The biggest increase is in 2024, but that is due to the Census Bureau updating its ACS methodology for this latest estimate. The Census Bureau’s weights, which it uses in its population estimates, had failed to fully account for the unexpected increase in irregular or illegal immigration from 2021 to 2024. This latest version accounts for that change.
As Figure 1 shows, immigrant population growth was suppressed during the first Trump administration. As a result, all immigration under President Biden had only recently brought the country back up to the pre-Trump trend. With President Trump once again blocking immigration, legal or otherwise, it is likely that immigrant population growth will again fall short of the 2017 projection of 51 million for next year. Most analysts are projecting a decline in the immigrant population this year.
Given President Trump’s recent comments about banning all “Third World” legal immigration, it is noteworthy that the entire increase in the immigrant population since 2006 has come from Asians, Africans, and Latin Americans. The largest group (5.7 million or 45 percent) came from Latin America, followed by Asia with 5.4 million (42 percent) and then Africa, which accounted for 1.1 million or 13 percent (Figure 2).
More significant for the relative importance of immigrants is their share of the US population (Figure 3). In 2024, immigrants accounted for 14.8 percent of the population, meaning 85.2 percent were native-born Americans. This percentage has increased 1.5 points from 2014 to 2024, which is the smallest increase since the 1970s (Figure 4). This was half the rate of growth as during the 1990s. In a global context, the United States still ranks in the bottom third among wealthy countries in terms of its immigrant population share.
Although this immigrant share matches the highest percentage on record, this feat is not the result of higher annual rates of immigration than in the early 20th century, rather it came about despite significantly lower annual rates. In fact, the reason the immigrant share of the US population has risen as much as it has is that population growth has slowed dramatically (Figure 5). Lower total population growth means that any level of immigration has a greater effect on the immigrant share over time than it did in the early 20th century, when population growth among the US-born was much faster.
The Census Bureau also projected in 2022 how immigration levels will affect future US population growth, accounting for the immigrants’ children and grandchildren. Its projections show that the United States will confront population decline in the coming decades if there are not “high levels” of immigration every year going forward. Without any immigration, the population would begin to decline quickly in the 2030s (Figure 6).
Hopefully, the higher rates of immigration from 2021 to 2024 will continue because slower population growth creates a litany of economic challenges for the United States, as I explained in my testimony before the US Senate Budget Committee. Right now, America’s politicians seem far more concerned with the supposedly unsustainable increases in immigration than with the collapsing worker-to-retiree ratio and the catastrophic loss of skilled workers from the United States to China and other countries.
America needs people both in the short and long term, and it needs workers of all skill levels. Immigrants can help contribute, and they should be allowed to do so legally.
This is an update of my post on the same topic last year.