The share of never-married American men in their twenties and thirties has exploded to roughly double the married share, fresh census-tied figures show.
There were 30.4 million bachelors ages 20 to 39 in the country in 2025, while about 15.4 million men in that bracket were married, according to a recent report from the Institute for Family Studies. In 2000, by comparison, there were 20.7 million bachelors and 18.1 million husbands — meaning the bachelor pool has swollen nearly 50% while the married column has shrunk by roughly 15%.
The gap between unmarried and married young men is now almost six times as great as it was at the turn of the millennium.
Brad Wilcox, a sociologist at the University of Virginia, tied the shift to deepening isolation and psychological distress among unattached men. “Such men are more likely to be lonely, prone to deaths of despair and unhappy,” he told the Washington Times, referring to bachelors.
“It’s never good for a society to have large numbers of unattached, dispirited, and unhappy young men.”
Wilcox noted that the marriage rate has dropped fastest among working-class men, as has child-rearing. He pointed to a growing share of young men who play video games and are addicted to social media.
“The digital revolution has exacted a major toll on their social skills, their opportunities to mix and mingle and their educational attainment,” he said.
“Our schools also do them a disservice, as they tend not to cater to the interests and educational orientations of boys,” Wilcox added.
The median age of first marriages for American men has climbed to around 31, up from 23.5 in 1975, according to US Census Bureau data. The delay tracks with broader generational patterns in social withdrawal.
About 25% of 40-year-olds of both genders reported in 2021 that they were never married, up from 6% in 1980, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data. Broken down by gender, that represented 28% of men and 22% of women.
The figures land alongside separate findings that more than two-thirds of Americans don’t socialize at all on any given day, with Gen Z particularly affected after spending key developmental years in COVID lockdowns. Nearly 10% of Gen Zers reported zero face-to-face interactions with another person in their daily life.
Gen Z also appears to be the most suspicious generation, with just 13% agreeing with the statement that most people can be trusted.