The US Census Bureau has revealed that the American populationgrew by one percent year-on-year in 2024, an increase of 3.3 million people driven by net international migration that takes the total number of US citizens past 340 million for the first time.

The agency reports that this is the fastest rate of growth since 2001 and represents a huge increase from the 0.1 percent total recorded in 2021 when the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic brought the world to a standstill.

“An annual growth rate of 1.0 percent is higher than what we’ve seen over recent years but well within historical norms,” said Kristie Wilder, a demographer in the Census Bureau’s Population Division.