Number of White People in the U.S. Shrinks

The number of white people in the U.S. has shrunk for the first time since the first census in 1790. According to yesterday’s release of 2020 Census data, there were around 191.7 million white people in the U.S. last year, down from 196.8 million when the last census was taken in 2010.

The percentage of white people as a share of the population has actually been shrinking for longer, as other racial and ethnic groups had been growing at a faster pace than whites. The share of the white U.S. population declined further from 63.7 percent in 2010 to 57.3 percent in 2020.

Latinos and people of Hispanic origin have been among the fastest growing groups in the United States and now number around 62 million, or 18.7 percent of the population, growing from just around 50 million a decade ago. Other races, including Asian, Native American and multiracial people, have grown even faster, largely due to an increasing number of people identifying as more than one race on the census. The number of Black and African-American people in the U.S. has grown more slowly, from 37.7 million in 2010 to 39.9 million in 2020, leading to their population share stagnating at around 12 percent.

The calculation includes only whites who do not identify as Latino or mixed race including white, while the number of Latinos includes Latinos of any race, including Black, white and others. When incorporating white Latinos and those identifying as white and other races, the white U.S. population grew from 231 million in 2010 to 235.4 million in 2020.