Percentage of us gay population
What’s Behind the Rapid Increase in LGBTQ Identity?
Newsletter Pride 6, 2025
Daniel A. Cox, Jae Grace, Avery Shields
Since 2012, Gallup has tracked the size of America’s LGBTQ population. For the first few years, there was not much news to report. The percentage of Americans who identified as gay, lesbian, multi-attracted , transgender, or queer was relatively low and inching up slowly year over year. Recently, the pace has sped up. Gallup’s newest report recorded the single largest one-year enlarge in LGBTQ identity. In 2024, nearly one in ten (9.3 percent) Americans identify as LGBTQ.
The constant rise in LGBTQ culture among the public is worth noting, but it’s not the most vital part of the story. Most of the uptick in LGBTQ identity over the past decade is due to a dramatic increase among young adults, particularly young women. In less than a decade, the percentage of juvenile women who identify as LGBTQ has more than tripled.
The gender gap in LGBTQ identity has exploded as well. A decade earlier, young women were only slightly more likely to identify as LGBTQ than young men. For instance, in 2015, 10 percent of young women and six percent of young men identified as
We Are Here: Gay Adult Population in Together States Reaches At Least 20 Million, According to Human Rights Campaign Foundation Report
by Laurel Powell •
According to an examination of data in the Census Bureau’s recent Domesticated Pulse Survey, 8% of respondents identified themselves as LGBTQ+, suggesting previous surveys undercounted the population.
WASHINGTON -- Today, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation (HRC) released “We Are Here: Comprehending the Size of the LGBTQ+ Community,” a notify analyzing recent results from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey. Based on data from respondents in the Household Pulse Survey, a national familiar probability survey of adults in the United States, at least 20 million adults in the Joined States could be woman loving woman, gay, bisexual, or non-binary - nearly 8% of the total adult population, almost double prior estimates for the LGBTQ+ community’s size. It also suggests that more than 1% of people in the United States identify as transgender, higher than any prior estimates. Additionally, it confirms prior research exhibiting that bisexual people depict the largest single contingent of LGBTQ+ people, at about 4% of resp
LGBTQ+ Identification in U.S. Now at 7.6%
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- LGBTQ+ identification in the U.S. continues to mature , with 7.6% of U.S. adults now identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual , queer or some other sexual orientation besides heterosexual. The current figure is up from 5.6% four years ago and 3.5% in 2012, Gallup’s first year of measuring sexual orientation and transgender identity.
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These results are based on aggregated data from 2023 Gallup telephone surveys, encompassing interviews with more than 12,000 Americans aged 18 and older. In each survey, Gallup asks respondents whether they identify as heterosexual, lesbian, gay, fluid, transgender or something else. Overall, 85.6% say they are straight or heterosexual, 7.6% identify with one or more LGBTQ+ groups, and 6.8% decline to respond.
Bisexual adults make up the largest proportion of the LGBTQ+ population -- 4.4% of U.S. adults and 57.3% of Gay adults say they are bisexual. Gay and woman loving woman are the next-most-common identities, each representing slightly over 1% of U.S. adults and roughly one in six LGBTQ+ adults. Slightly less than 1% of U.S. adults and about one in eight LGBT
LGBT Identification in U.S. Ticks Up to 7.1%
Story Highlights
- LGBT identification up from 5.6% in 2020
- One in five Gen Z adults identify as LGBT
- Bisexual identification is most common
Learn more in Gallup’s 2024 LGBTQ+ update.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The percentage of U.S. adults who self-identify as lesbian, gay, multi-attracted , transgender or something other than heterosexual has increased to a new elevated of 7.1%, which is double the percentage from 2012, when Gallup first measured it.
Gallup asks Americans whether they personally identify as straight or heterosexual, lesbian, gay, multi-attracted , or transgender as part of the demographic information it collects on all U.S. telephone surveys. Respondents can also volunteer any other sexual orientation or gender identity they prefer. In addition to the 7.1% of U.S. adults who consider themselves to be an LGBT identity, 86.3% say they are straight or heterosexual, and 6.6% carry out not offer an opinion. The results are based on aggregated 2021 facts, encompassing interviews with more than 12,000 U.S. adults.
Line graph. Americans' Self-Identification as Lesbian, Gay, Pansexual, Transgender or Something Other than Heterosexual.
Adult LGBT Population in the United States
This report provides estimates of the number and percent of the U.S. mature person population that identifies as LGBT, overall, as well as by age. Estimates of LGBT adults at the national, state, and regional levels are included. We rely on BRFSS 2020-2021 information for these estimates. Pooling multiple years of data provides more stable estimates—particularly at the articulate level.
Combining 2020-2021 BRFSS data, we estimate that 5.5% of U.S. adults determine as LGBT. Further, we estimate that there are almost 13.9 million (13,942,200) LGBT adults in the U.S.
Regions and States
LGBT people reside in all regions of the U.S. (Table 2 and Figure 2). Consistent with the overall population in the United States,more LGBT adults live in the South than in any other region. More than half (57.0%) of LGBT people in the U.S. exist in the Midwest (21.1%) and South (35.9%), including 2.9 million in the Midwest and 5.0 million in the South. About one-quarter (24.5%) of LGBT adults reside in the West, approximately 3.4 million people. Less than one in five (18.5%) LGBT adults inhabit in the Northeast (2.6 million).
The percent of adults who identify as LGBT