According to government data released last week, the number of Americans tying the knot is now at the lowest level ever recorded. While this trend was happening before the spread of COVID-19, with the U.S. marriage rate dropping six percent in 2018, fear of the virus and stay-at-home orders are plunging the number even lower.
On 29 April, Sally Curtin, a statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics, stated, “Millennials are in peak marriage years, their 20s and 30s, and it’s still dropping… This is historic.”
The last time this dearth of marriages was seen was during the Great Depression. Given the financial insecurity of millennials since the 2008 financial crisis, and now the added job loss and uncertainty caused by the imposed government shutdown strategy, limitations on social gatherings are expected to push marriage rates yet lower.
