Self-employment remains a vital part of the U.S. economy, with 29.8 million nonemployer businesses generating $1.7 trillion in receipts in 2022, about 6.8% of total output. In 2024, 11.1% of U.S. households reported self-employment income, with Montana and Vermont leading at 15.7%. State-level data reveal sharp differences in self-employment intensity, driven by industry mix and demographics.
The U.S. median age reached 39.4 years in 2025, continuing a steady rise from 38.6 in April 2020. Maine remains the oldest state at 44.8 years, while Utah is the youngest at 32.1. State differences reflect migration, fertility, and mortality patterns, with wide implications for policy and planning.
Since 2019, U.S. inflation has not hit all households equally. Lower- and middle-income workers faced higher inflation but also stronger wage growth, ending 2024 with about 4.5 percentage points more cumulative wage growth than inflation, while the top 20 percent saw a smaller net gain of about 3.5 percentage points. CBO and BLS analyses show lower-income households spend larger shares on necessities, making inflation more painful even as real incomes recovered.
The GDP deflator, also called the implicit price deflator, measures price changes for all new, domestically produced final goods and services. It is calculated as the ratio of nominal GDP to real GDP, multiplied by 100. Unlike the Consumer Price Index, it uses a changing basket, includes exports, and excludes imports. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis publishes it quarterly and annually.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that nonfarm payroll employment was essentially unchanged in most states in June 2026, with increases in only three states and a decrease in one. The national unemployment rate held at 4.2 percent. California remained the largest state job market among available data, while the District of Columbia posted the sharpest year-over-year decline.
The U.S. Census Bureau’s Vintage 2025 city and town population estimates, released May 14, 2026, show Celina, Texas, as the fastest-growing U.S. city among places with at least 20,000 residents, growing 24.6% between July 1, 2024, and July 1, 2025. Texas dominated the list of fastest-growing communities, while the nation’s largest cities experienced the sharpest slowdowns in growth. Midsized cities held steady, and outer suburbs often outpaced their core cities.
In 2025, nearly 15 million American adults moved between states, with Texas, South Carolina, and North Carolina leading net gains while California and New York saw the largest outflows. The South continued to dominate domestic migration, but the overall pace cooled from the pandemic-era boom as higher mortgage rates, return-to-office policies, and a shrinking affordability gap dampened relocation. Per capita, South Carolina, Idaho, and Delaware posted the strongest net in-migration.
Real GDP is the federal government’s primary measure of U.S. economic output, but it is not a simple sum of goods and services. The Bureau of Economic Analysis builds real GDP using chain-type indexes and chained-dollar measures, which remove the effects of price changes and allow meaningful comparisons over time. Rebasing changes the reference year for real estimates, but it does not alter the percentage changes that analysts use to track growth.
Every decade, the 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives are redistributed among states based on population counts. Mid-decade estimates and 2030 projections suggest the South and Mountain West could gain seats, while parts of the Northeast and Midwest may lose them. If 2024 Census Bureau estimates were used today, Texas and Florida would each gain two seats, Arizona and Idaho would each gain one, and Illinois, Minnesota, New York, and Oregon would each lose one.
In 2025, U.S. employers added just 584,000 jobs, the weakest year outside a recession since 2003. Health care and social assistance accounted for roughly 405,000 of those gains, meaning the rest of the economy lost jobs on net. Manufacturing, retail trade, and other goods-producing sectors declined, while food services and drinking places trended up.