Four takeaways from the new Census population estimates

Immigration declined dramatically. Census estimates now align with other government estimates. The 2026 Current Population Survey population base will be adjusted downward.

Today Census released its vintage 2025 population estimates, including estimates of immigration. Census estimated net immigration to be 1.3 million in the year ending July 1, 2025, a big drop from 2.7 million in the year ending July 1, 2024. Critically, this slowdown in immigration means that population levels and growth in 2025 and 2026 will be lower than previously projected. The Current Population Survey will show a downward adjustment of 724 thousand people in early 2026.

Today’s release includes new annual estimates of the population for July 1, 2025, and revised annual estimates back to April 1, 2020.[1] Today’s release also includes monthly population projections from August 2025 to December 2026.[2]

Here are four takeaways:

Immigration has clearly slowed, and Census and CBO estimates are aligned

Census estimates immigration for July 1, 2024, to July 1, 2025 at 1.3 million, a dramatic decline from 2.7 million in 2024 and 2.3 million in 2023. The 2025 estimate remains above the estimates for all years in the 2010’s. Because the Census “year” covers the second half of 2024 and the first half of 2025, today’s estimates do not fully capture the changes in immigration policy in 2025.

This Census estimate of 1.3 million for 2025 is well above the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate of 408 thousand, but CBO estimates cover the calendar year. The Census estimate of 1.3 million for July 1, 2024, to July 1, 2025, is between the CBO estimate of 2.3 million for calendar year 2024 and 408 thousand for calendar year 2025.[3] In a blogpost today, Census shows that after years of divergence, Census and CBO now appear to be broadly aligned on their immigration projections, as their Figure 5 (below) shows.

The Current Population Survey’s population controls will be adjusted downward and then rise more slowly in 2026

This new immigration estimate for 2025 is lower than Census implicitly projected a year ago. Accordingly, today’s new monthly population projections for 2025 have been revised downward, and the January 2026 Current Population Survey (CPS) will show a downward population adjustment of 724 thousand people in December 2025.

This will likely translate to a downward adjustment to the adult population by 580-590 thousand; to the labor force by 370-410 thousand; and to the level of employment by 350-380 thousand.[4] Even though these downward revisions and adjustments are due to less immigration, the downward adjustments as reported in the CPS will affect both the native- and foreign-born population counts, as explained in detail here.

Not only will the population level in the CPS be adjusted downward in early 2026; in addition, the total population reported in the CPS will grow more slowly in 2026 than in 2025. The total increase in the projected population from December 2025 to December 2026 is 819 thousand, substantially below the 1.9 million population growth for 2025 in last year’s Census estimates.

The projected population growth for 2026 as reflected in the CPS – 819 thousand -- is quite close to CBO’s projection for population growth in 2026, which is 883 thousand.[5] Again, Census and CBO projections are aligned.

Immigration estimates revised up for New York, down for Florida

There was an important change in the Census population estimates to state and local immigration numbers. Census revised how it geographically distributed the “humanitarian migrants” from the immigration surge of 2022-2024. Originally, Census distributed these migrants to states and counties using the same percentages as the immigrant population that was observed in the American Community Survey. However, these humanitarian migrants appeared to settle in somewhat different places than the immigrants reported in the ACS, who were more likely to arrive via traditional, established immigrant pathways.

In today’s release, Census re-estimated the geographic distribution of humanitarian migrants in line with data from immigration court filings. This revision boosted the estimated population in 2024 in states where court filings show a disproportionate share of migrants, such as New York, Colorado, and Louisiana, while reducing the estimated population in Washington DC, Hawaii, Alaska, and Florida.

Kudos to Census for methodological improvements to its estimates

With the vintage 2025 estimates, Census made numerous methodological improvements, both to the base population estimates and to the immigration estimates specifically. As noted above, Census improved its geographic allocation of immigrants in 2022-2024 with immigration court filing data. Census also incorporated Mexican survey data to better estimate emigration out of the U.S.

These adjustments improve Census estimates meaningfully. Census should be commended for identifying and implementing these improvements, especially at a time when (1) policy changes make immigration especially challenging to measure; (2) immigration is a highly charged political issue; and (3) the Census Bureau – like other U.S. statistical agencies – has suffered from large reductions in staff and delays from the autumn 2025 government shutdown.

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[1] These annual estimates break out population changes into births, deaths, and immigration, or more formally net international migration (NIM). The annual estimates are used for federal funding allocations and policy planning at multiple levels of government. Today’s annual estimates include national and state data. Subsequent releases will include demographic detail and county, city, and town estimates. Estimates at the subnational level include population change due to domestic migration, which by definition nets out to zero at the national level.

[2] Monthly projections do not break out changes due to births, deaths, and NIM, and are produced only at the national level. Subsequent releases will include demographic detail. Previous monthly projections up to July 1, 2025, are revised to align with the latest annual estimates. These projections are the basis for Current Population Survey (CPS) population controls in 2026 and are the denominator for per capita measures of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and other economic indicators in 2026.

[3] The CBO estimate of 408k for calendar year 2025 is above the range of -10k to -295k recently estimated by Edelberg, Veuger, and Watson, who assume more deportations and emigration than CBO does.

[4] These implied adjustments to the adult population, labor force, and employed population are ranges based on the December 2025 CPS age distributions, labor force participation rates, and employment-population ratios of (1) the total population and (2) immigrants to the U.S. since 2020. The adjustment to the total population is assumed to be largely due to revisions to the demographic cells with relatively high proportions of recent immigrants.

[5] These two numbers aren’t exactly comparable. The Census projections that become the CPS population controls refer to the civilian noninstitutionalized population, while CBO includes the entire resident population of U.S. states and territories plus people abroad who qualify for Social Security. Also, CBO projections are January 1 to January 1, while Census projections are published only through December 1, 2026 and therefore the annual estimate is from December 1 of the previous year. See Figure 2 of the accompanying data tables to the CBO 2026 Demographic Outlook.