Trump’s campaign against immigration led to a decline in the population growth rate in the United States last year

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration has contributed to a year-over-year decline in the country’s growth rate as the U.S. population reaches nearly 342 million people in 2025, according to population estimates released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The 0.5% growth rate for 2025 was a sharp decline from the 2024 growth rate of nearly 1%, which was the highest since 2001 and was driven by migration. Estimates in 2024 indicate that the population of the United States will reach 340 million.

He watches: Democrats pledge to defund Department of Homeland Security after shooting in Minnesota

Migration increased by 1.3 million people last year, compared to a 2024 increase of 2.8 million people. The Census Bureau report did not distinguish between legal and illegal immigration.

In the past 125 years, the lowest growth rate was in 2021, during the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, when the US population grew by just 0.16%, or 522,000 people and immigration increased by just 376,000 people due to travel restrictions to the US. Before that, the lowest growth rate was just under 0.5% in 1919 at the height of the Spanish Flu.

The number of births outnumbered deaths last year by 519,000 people.

The decline in immigration has led to a decline in growth in many states that were traditionally attractive to immigrants.

He watches: Minnesota State Senator Tina Smith calls for “meaningful restraint” of “lawless” federal agents.

California saw a net population loss of 9,500 people in 2025, a stark change from the previous year, when it gained 232,000 residents, although roughly the same number of Californians already living in the state moved out in both years. The difference was immigration as the number of net immigrants moving to the state fell from 361,000 people in 2024 to 109,000 in 2025.

Florida has seen an annual decline in the number of immigrants and people moving from other states. The Sunshine State, which has become more expensive in recent years due to rising property values ​​and rising home insurance costs, had just 22,000 domestic immigrants in 2025, compared to 64,000 people in 2024, and the net number of immigrants fell from more than 411,000 people to 178,000 people.

New York added just 1,008 people in 2025, mostly because net immigration of immigrants in the state fell from 207,000 people to 95,600 people.

Tuesday’s data release comes as researchers try to determine the effects of the Trump administration’s second immigration crackdown after the Republican president returns to the White House in January 2025. Trump has made the surge of migrants at the southern border a central issue in his winning 2024 presidential campaign.

Read more: A second American citizen was killed by federal forces in Minneapolis. Here’s what we know

The numbers announced Tuesday reflect the change from July 2024 to July 2025, and cover the end of President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration and the first half of Trump’s first year back in office.

The numbers capture the period that reflects the beginning of increases in law enforcement in Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, but do not reflect the impact on immigration after the start of the Trump administration’s crackdowns in Chicago; New Orleans. Memphis, Tennessee; And Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The 2025 numbers were a stark difference from 2024, when net international migration accounted for 84% of the country’s increase of 3.3 million people from the previous year. The jump in immigration two years ago was partly due to a new counting method that added people admitted on humanitarian grounds.

“It reflects recent trends that we’ve seen in out-migration, where the numbers of people coming in and the numbers of people going out have declined,” Eric Jensen, a senior research scientist at the Census Bureau, said last week.

Unlike the once-every-decade Census, which determines the number of congressional seats and Electoral College votes each state receives, as well as the distribution of $2.8 trillion in annual government funding, population estimates are calculated from government records and internal Census Bureau data.

The release of the 2025 population estimates was delayed by the federal government shutdown last fall, and comes at a difficult time for the Census Bureau and other U.S. statistical agencies. The bureau, the largest statistical agency in the United States, lost about 15% of its workforce last year due to buyouts and layoffs that were part of cost-cutting efforts by the White House and its Department of Government Efficiency.

Other recent actions by the Trump administration, such as the removal of Erica McIntarver as Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, have raised concerns about political interference in US statistical agencies. But Brookings Institution demographer William Frey said office staff seemed to be “doing business as usual without interference.”

“So I have no reason to doubt the numbers that are coming out,” Fry said.