Headlines about marriage in America tend to pick one of two stories: "marriage is dying" or "marriage is bouncing back." The CDC's own vital-statistics numbers support pieces of both, because two different measurements — the marriage rate and the raw marriage count — have been moving in different directions for two decades. Untangling them matters for anyone reading the jewelry industry's mood: the number of people who need an engagement ring or a wedding band each year is closer to the raw count than to the rate.
The Marriage Rate Has Been Falling Since 2000
The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), part of the CDC, publishes a national marriage rate every year: marriages per 1,000 people in the total US population. In 2000, that rate was 8.2. By 2024 — the most recent year with provisional data — it had fallen to 6.3. The decline wasn't smooth. It bottomed out at 5.1 in 2020, the sharpest single-year drop on record for this series, as courthouses closed and couples postponed weddings during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A rate this low has a simple structural cause that has nothing to do with romance: the US population has grown by about 59 million people since 2000, while the number of adults who are already married (and so aren't getting married again that year) has grown even faster as the population ages. Dividing a relatively flat number of weddings by a bigger denominator mechanically pushes the rate down, even in a year when the actual number of ceremonies goes up.
But 2024 Had the Second-Most Weddings Since 2018
The raw count tells a different, more specific story. NCHS recorded 2,128,446 marriages in 2024. That's well above every year from 2019 through 2023, and it comes within about 4,400 ceremonies of matching 2018's total of 2,132,853 — the highest full year on record since. In other words: 2024 wasn't just a rebound from the 2020 pandemic trough, it was close to erasing the entire six-year dip.
Put the two charts side by side and the picture is coherent rather than contradictory: the rate is a long, slow decline driven mostly by demographics; the count is a short, sharp pandemic dip followed by a near-complete recovery. Anyone selling anything tied to weddings — venues, dresses, rings — lives and dies by the count, not the rate, since the count is the actual number of ceremonies happening that year.
The Highest and Lowest Years in the Series
Zooming out across the full 2000–2024 CDC series: the most marriages recorded in any single year was 2001, at 2,326,000, just ahead of 2000's 2,315,000 — both years sit at the top of a slow decline that ran through the 2000s, from a rate of 8.2 in 2000–2001 down to 7.1 by 2008. The 2010s were comparatively flat, holding in the high-6s to low-7s (6.8 in 2010, 7.0 in 2016), before sliding again toward 6.0–6.1 just before the pandemic. The single lowest year on record is 2020, both by rate (5.1) and by raw count (1,676,911) — a one-year drop of roughly 339,000 ceremonies from 2019. No other year in the series comes close to that size of swing in either direction.
A Caveat the Raw Numbers Don't Show
NCHS's marriage table is close to a full national count, with only two small historical gaps: Georgia is excluded from 2013 and 2014, and Louisiana from 2006. The companion divorce table is a bigger exception — it permanently excludes California, Hawaii, Indiana, Minnesota and New Mexico for recent years (the exact excluded-state list changes by year; some years also drop Georgia or Louisiana). California alone is the country's most populous state, so the national divorce count NCHS publishes is a meaningful undercount of the true total, even though the marriage count sitting next to it is close to complete. That mismatch is worth knowing before comparing the two tables directly.
What This Means If You're Shopping for a Ring
A marriage count recovering toward pre-pandemic levels lines up with what engagement ring spending data has shown for the same stretch: couples are still buying rings, and the market didn't shrink the way the falling rate alone might suggest. If you're one of the roughly 2.1 million couples who got married in 2024 — or planning to be one of 2025's or 2026's — the ring is usually just the start. Anniversary gifts by year follow a fairly fixed tradition (paper, then cotton, then leather, and on), so it's worth knowing the pattern before year one arrives. For the ring itself, FARUZO's personalized rings are 316L stainless steel with a plated finish rather than solid precious metal, which keeps the engraving and the price point separate from the commodities swings that move gold, platinum and palladium.
That distinction between rate and count is worth holding onto whenever a headline cites one number without the other. "The marriage rate hit a new low" and "the number of weddings is recovering toward pre-pandemic levels" are both accurate descriptions of the same 2024 CDC data — they're just measuring different things. For a jewelry brand, or for anyone trying to size the market, the count is the number that maps onto actual demand: it's closer to the number of engagements, ring purchases and wedding-band orders that happened that year, independent of how fast the overall population happened to grow around them.
The Marriage-to-Divorce Ratio, Calculated
NCHS doesn't publish a combined marriage-to-divorce ratio, but one can be calculated directly from its own two tables: in 2000, there were 2,315,000 marriages against 944,000 divorces and annulments, a ratio of about 2.45 marriages for every divorce that year. In 2024, 2,128,446 marriages against 662,950 divorces works out to roughly 3.21 marriages for every divorce — a higher ratio than in 2000, though the divorce side of that comparison carries the multi-state undercount described above, so the true 2024 ratio including every state is almost certainly a little lower than 3.21.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the US marriage rate going up or down?
Down over the long run. The rate fell from 8.2 marriages per 1,000 people in 2000 to 6.3 in 2024, per CDC/NCHS. It has ticked up slightly since the 2020 low of 5.1, but remains well below any year in the 2000s.
How many weddings happen in the US each year?
About 2.1 million in 2024, the most recent provisional CDC figure (2,128,446, to be exact). That is close to 2018's total of 2,132,853 and well above every year from 2019 to 2023.
Why did US marriages drop so much in 2020?
The COVID-19 pandemic. Courthouses and venues closed or limited capacity through much of 2020, and many couples postponed. CDC/NCHS recorded 1,676,911 marriages that year, the lowest count in the 2000–2024 series and a sharp one-year drop from 2019's 2,015,603.
Does the CDC divorce rate cover every state?
No. The most recent years permanently exclude California, Hawaii, Indiana, Minnesota and New Mexico from the national divorce and annulment count (the exact list of excluded states varies by year). The marriage table is much closer to complete, with only Georgia (2013–2014) and Louisiana (2006) missing historically.
What was the highest US marriage rate on record in this data?
Within the CDC/NCHS series that starts in 2000, the highest rate was 8.2 marriages per 1,000 people, recorded in both 2000 and 2001. The series does not go back further, so it cannot say whether an earlier year was higher still.
