By 2030, more Americans will die than be born, CBO predicts – with immigrants the only source of growth

“Net immigration (the number of people who migrate to the United States minus the number of people who leave) is expected to become an increasingly important source of population growth in coming years, as declining fertility rates will cause more annual deaths than annual births starting in 2030,” the CBO writes. “Without immigration, the population would begin to decline in 2030.”

From that point on, every additional person added to the U.S. population will come from immigration, a demographic milestone once associated with aging countries like Italy And Japan.

This change is striking not only for what it reveals about the rapid aging of American society, but also for the time frame in which it is expected to occur. Barely a year ago, many population forecasts, including those from the CBO own forecast— placed this crossover well into the late 2030s, or even the 2040s. The CBO’s updated outlook moves the timeline forward by nearly a decade.

This rapid acceleration, the CBO said, is due to the “dual pressures” of declining fertility and an aging population, combined with recent immigration policy changes. CBO analysts have significantly lowered their expectations for the total fertility rate, now projecting that it will stabilize at just 1.53 births per woman – well below the 2.1 “replacement rate” needed for a stable population. At the same time, the massive generation of “baby boomers” is reaching ages with higher mortality rates, leading to an annual increase in deaths.

The timeline narrowed further after passage of the Reconciliation Act of 2025, which increased funding for more ICE agents and immigration judges to process cases more quickly, resulting in the detention of about 50,000 immigrants daily through 2029, the CBO said. The bureau calculated that these provisions would result in a loss of about 320,000 people in the U.S. population by 2035 compared to previous estimates.

The new projections show that U.S. population growth will slow steadily over the next three decades until finally reaching zero in 2056. For most of the 20th century, the population grew at nearly 1 percent per year: a stable population would represent a historic break from that norm.

It is difficult to overstate the economic consequences of this change. As the number of retirees increases, the pool of workers who fund the social safety net – and care for the aging population – shrinks. Americans aged 65 and older are the fastest growing segment of the population, driving up the “elder dependency ratio” significantly. In 1960, there were about five workers for every retiree. Today, that ratio is closer to three to one. By the mid-2050s, the CBO projects that figure will drop to about two workers per retiree. The contraction will have “significant implications” for the federal budget, including outsized effects on Social Security and Medicare, putting pressure on trust funds that rely on a strong payroll tax base that a stagnant population cannot easily provide.

Additionally, since national GDP is essentially the product of the number of workers times their individual productivity, the loss of labor force growth means that the U.S. economy will have to rely almost entirely on technological breakthroughs and AI to generate future gains. This could happen sooner than expected, as continued weakness in job growth in December showed an “expansion of unemployment”, in the words of KPMG chief economist Diane Swonk, as well as Fortune previously reported.