Marriages in the U.S. are back to pre-pandemic levels, CDC says

NEW YORK —  U.S. marriages have rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, with nearly 2.1 million new unions in 2022.

That’s a 4% increase from the year before. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the data Friday, but last year’s marriage data have yet to be released.

In 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were 1.7 million U.S. weddings — the lowest number recorded since 1963. The pandemic threw many marriage plans into disarray, with communities ordering people to stay at home and banning large gatherings to limit the spread of COVID-19.

Marriages then rose in 2021, but not to pre-pandemic levels. They ticked up again in 2022, surpassing 2019 marriage statistics by a small margin.

New York, the District of Columbia and Hawaii saw the largest increases in marriages from 2021 to 2022. Nevada — home to Las Vegas’ famous wedding chapels — continued to have the highest marriage rate in the nation, though it decreased slightly from 2021.

The number and rate of U.S. divorces fell slightly in 2022, continuing a downward trend, the CDC said.

Overall, marriages remain far less common than they once were in the U.S.

According to data that goes back to 1900, weddings hit their height in 1946, when the nation’s marriage rate was 16.4 per 1,000 people. The rate was above 10 per 1,000 people in the early 1980s before the beginning of a decades-long decline.

In 2022, the marriage rate was 6.2 per 1,000 people.

Stobbe writes for the Associated Press.