Stat: Covid pandemic left 13.3m more Americans single

US – The Covid-19 pandemic left an additional 13.3m people in the US single by 2022, a study by Stanford University professor Michael Rosenfeld claims. The survey was first conducted in 2017 to measure casual ties and was rerun in 2020 to assess the impact of the pandemic.

It revealed how millions of informal relationships fell apart while married and cohabitating couples survived the pandemic intact. When the survey was run again in 2022, it showed that 13.3m more people were still single and not dating despite the mass vaccine rollout.  

According to Rosenfeld, a long-term consequence of this ‘dating recession’ is that Americans will take longer to reach the traditional adult milestones such as marriage, children and home ownership. 

The lack of recovery in the social lives of Americans post-Covid is supported by data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics which showed that people spent far more time alone and less in group activities in 2023 than they did four years earlier.  

In our market analysis on Gen Z Dating Futures, we studied how rising levels of loneliness are making way for hyper-personalised, community-based safe havens.