For the first time since the Great Depression, more people left the United States than entered. This figure will likely rise in 2026.

The number of people leaving the US in 2025 exceeded the number of people entering the country for the first time since the Great Depression (1929-1939).

This was reported by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) based on its own data and calculations by the Brookings Institution.

As noted, in 2025, the number of people leaving the US exceeded the number of people immigrating to the country by 150,000, and this figure will likely rise in 2026.

Although the US administration attributes the outflow to a fight against illegal immigration, in reality, American citizens themselves are actively leaving the country, preferring safer and more affordable countries to the United States.

The publication analyzed migration statistics for 15 countries and found that at least 180,000 Americans moved there in 2025.

Furthermore, in almost all EU countries, the number of Americans moving to live and work has reached a record high and continues to grow.

‘For some citizens, the new American dream is to no longer live in the US,’ the article emphasises.

The last recorded outflow of population from the US was at the height of the Great Depression, in 1935. More than 100,000 chose the Soviet Union as their new place of residence.

It is estimated that 7 million Americans died of malnutrition and starvation-related disease during the ‘hungry 1930s’. 

13 million people became unemployed. In 1932, 34 million people belonged to families with no regular full-time wage earner.

Industrial production fell by nearly 45% between 1929 and 1932. One Soviet trading corporation in New York averaged 350 applications a day from Americans seeking jobs in the Soviet Union. Few will have returned to their homelands from Communist Russia.  

Over one million families lost their farms between 1930 and 1934. Between 1929 and 1932, the income of the average American family was reduced by 40%.  Nine million savings accounts had been wiped out between 1930 and 1933.

273,000 families had been evicted from their homes in 1932.  Two million homeless people were migrating around the country. Over 60% of Americans were categorized as poor by the federal government in 1933. In the last prosperous year (1929), there were 79,678 immigrants recorded, but in 1933, only 23,068 came to the U.S.

In the early 1930s, more people emigrated from the United States than immigrated to it. New York social workers reported that 25% of all schoolchildren were malnourished. In the mining counties of West Virginia, Illinois, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania, the proportion of malnourished children was as high as 90%. Many people became ill with diseases such as tuberculosis.

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