A Gallup study released Thursday says that the number of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or otherwise non-heterosexual adults in the U.S. has continued to rise and now stands at 9.3%, up from 7.6% in 2023.
In a phone chat, senior editor at Gallup Jeff Jones said that he didn’t think that number would go up so quickly.
Jones said, “I didn’t think we’d get to 10% so fast.” “We’re not quite there yet, but it looks like it might only be a few years away. Before, I thought it might take a couple of decades or so.” That 1 in 10 number is getting close, and I think that would be a big step forward.
Within the past year, Gallup talked on the phone with 14,000 people from all 50 states, and about 900 of them said they were LGBTQ. The data was then weighted to make sure that the sample correctly reflects the national population. This is how Gallup came to the conclusion that 9.3% of U.S. adults are LGBTQ. LGBTQ people who answered the poll had margins of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Jones said that the rise in LGBTQ identification over the last year is because more people from Generation Z (19–28 years old) are becoming adults. The Gallup study found that 23.1% of Gen Z are LGBTQ. This is compared to 14.2% of millennials (ages 29 to 44), 5.1% of Generation X (ages 45 to 60), 3% of baby boomers (ages 61 to 79), and 1.8% of people aged 80 and up.
Jones said, “That number is going to go up as more kids in Gen Z become adults.”
It has been a while since U.S. adults who identified as LGBTQ reached a plateau. In 2023, 7.6% of adults did, up just a little from 7.2% in 2022.
Jones said that Gallup had seen a bigger rise in the number of LGBTQ people identifying as something other than straight in 2021, when 7.1% of U.S. adults said they were LGBTQ, up 5.6% from 2020.
The number of people who say they identify as LGBTQ has almost tripled in the 12 years that Gallup has been tracking the topic. In 2012, only 3.5% of U.S. adults said they identified within the LGBTQ group.
Jones said that one reason there are more LGBTQ young people is that they are much more likely to be bisexual than older people. There are 56.3% of LGBTQ adults in the U.S. who say they are bisexual, which is more than half of all LGBTQ adults. However, that number drops dramatically for older people.
Among LGBTQ adults in Gen Z, 59% are bisexual. This is higher than the 52% of LGBTQ millennials, 44% of LGBTQ Generation X, 19% of LGBTQ baby boomers, and 11% of LGBTQ people 80 and older. Gallup found that older LGBTQ people are most likely to say they are gay or lesbian.
Jones said that women are more likely than men to be bisexual, and that younger women are especially likely to identify as bisexual and, by extension, LGBTQ+.
According to the study, 31% of Gen Z women and 12% of Gen Z men say they are LGBTQ, with most saying they are bisexual. About one in five millennial women (18%) say they are LGBTQ, but only 9% of millennial men do.
The Gallup report says that only 1.3% of U.S. people are transgender, which is still a very small number. With 4.1%, group Z is the most likely group to identify as trans. People in Generation X are the next most likely, followed by baby boomers with 0.2% and people aged 80 and up with less than 0.1%.
The study also found that identifying as LGBTQ is different depending on your political party. For example, 14% of Democrats, 11% of independents, and 3% of Republicans all say they are LGBTQ.
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