U.S. marriages have rebounded to pre-pandemic levels with nearly 2.1 million in 2022.
That’s a 4 percent increase from the year before. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the data Friday, but has not released marriage data for last year.
In 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were 1.7 million U.S. weddings — the lowest number recorded since 1963. The pandemic threw many marriage plans into disarray, with communities ordering people to stay at home and banning large gatherings to limit the spread of COVID-19.
Marriages then rose in 2021, but not to pre-pandemic levels. They ticked up again in 2022 and surpassed 2019 marriage statistics by a small margin.
New York, the District of Columbia and Hawaii saw the largest increases in marriages from 2021 to 2022. Nevada — home to Las Vegas’ famous wedding chapels — continued to have the highest marriage rate in the nation, though it slightly decreased from 2021.
The number and rate of U.S. divorces in 2022 fell slightly, continuing a downward trend, the CDC said.
Overall, marriages remain far less common than they once were in the U.S.
According to data that goes back to 1900, weddings hit their height in 1946, when the marriage rate was 16.4 per 1,000 people. At the time, Americans were marrying at a frenzied rate amid fears about a man shortage after World War II.
As late as the early 1980s, there were more than 10 marriages per 1,000 people every year, and then the marriage rate began a decades-long decline. In 2022, the marriage rate was 6.2 per 1,000 people.
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The Associated Press contributed to this article.