What a crowd!

We will remember 2021 for many things, and one of them that you might not know about is this: it was the first year since 1937 that the US population grew by less than 1 million people.

Those who sit around figuring things out lay the blame for this at the feet of the pandemic (and those are some pretty big feet!) The coronavirus cut way back on  immigration, made people think twice about having babies, and, saddest of all, killed hundreds of thousands of U.S. residents.

In fact, the population grew by only 0.1%, as an additional 392,665 Americans were added to the rolls between July 2020 and July 2021, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

You would have to go back to 1937 (and some of you probably would!) to see a year in which our head count grew by less than 1 million people.

 William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s metropolitan policy program, Brookings Metro, weighs in: “I was expecting low growth but nothing this low. It tells us that this pandemic has had a huge impact on us in all kinds of ways, and now demography.”

With time, once we find a way to control the pandemic (spoiler alert: masks, distancing, and vaccinations) we may see fewer of our fellow shuffling off the mortal coil, but population growth will likely continue to stagnate because of fewer births.

“We have an aging population {editor's note: hard to argue that!} and that means fewer women in child-bearing ages,” Frey said. “We see younger people putting off having children and they’re going to have fewer children.”

I remember the news headlines the day after basketball star Kobe Bryant and eight others were killed in a helicopter crash in January of 2020, which was really not that long ago. Further on down the page was a story about a mystery virus that was puzzling doctors and epidemiologists, and causing concern among public health officials.

That virus has now reached pandemic proportions and it has affected the world in ways we never even imagined, not quite two years ago. I think it's safe to say the world has changed for good.

On the other hand, they tell me McRibs are back, so there's that. And with fewer people in the way, that's more for you and me!