A New LGBTQ Population Estimate Puts Us at 12% of the Country

On August 20th, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation published a new estimate of how many of us there are, and the number was higher than the one most people have been circulating. Roughly 12% of U.S. adults — about 25.6 million people — identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or gender diverse, according to the HRC Foundation’s analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.

Counting has always been part of this story. If you want to understand why a percentage point can feel like an argument about whether you exist, it helps to read the longer history of how transgender people have been recorded, miscounted, and left off the form entirely. This week’s figure is the newest entry in a very old ledger.

What the new LGBTQ population estimate found

The estimate draws on more than 2.4 million responses to the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey collected from 2021 through 2024. HRC’s headline share is 12.03%. The Foundation reports that LGBTQ+ adults now make up more than 10% of the adult population in 40 states plus the District of Columbia — Arizona at 13.34%, Texas at 12.54%, Ohio at 11.29%, Pennsylvania at 11.14%, among them. More than half of LGBTQ+ adults, 53.8%, are between 18 and 34.

The transgender share is reported separately, and deliberately so. The Household Pulse Survey asked distinct questions about sexual orientation, sex assigned at birth, and current gender identity; transgender and gender-expansive status was derived by comparing the last two. On that measure, HRC puts transgender and gender-expansive people at roughly 21% of LGBTQ+ adults, including a group who identify as straight and trans at once. The Foundation is explicit that orientation and gender identity are two different dimensions and should not be added together into a single total — a distinction I have spent years trying to explain to people who would rather have one tidy box.

“LGBTQ+ Americans are everywhere,” HRC President Kelley Robinson said in the release. “We now have critical mass in almost every state.”

Why this number is bigger than the last one

Gallup’s most recent reading puts LGBTQ+ identification at 9%. Twelve is not nine, and the gap is the most interesting thing in the report.

HRC attributes it to method. The Household Pulse Survey is self-administered — you answer on a screen, alone — while Gallup’s estimate comes from telephone interviews. A private form, the Foundation argues, invites more candor on questions people are not always willing to say out loud to a stranger. That is a reasonable explanation. It is also, by its nature, an inference rather than a proof.

The honest reading is the one HRC itself offers: there is no single definitive count of LGBTQ+ adults. Different instruments, different question wording, and different modes of contact produce different populations, and none of them is the population. Someone inclined to read the higher figure as evidence of a country finally telling the truth about itself can find support here. So can someone inclined to read it as an artifact of how the question was asked. Both readings are available because the underlying uncertainty is real, and pretending otherwise does no one any favors.

The timing is not in dispute. HRC notes that this data was gathered before sexual orientation and gender identity measures were widely removed from federal data collections. Whatever you make of the estimate, it may be a while before anyone can build a comparable one.

What a number can and cannot do

I have never been persuaded that being numerous is the same as being safe. Twelve percent will be quoted in legislative hearings this fall by people who want it to mean we are too large to legislate against, and by people who want it to mean something has gone wrong with the country. A count does not settle an argument about dignity; it only tells you how many people the argument is about.

Still, I keep returning to the 53.8% under 35. That is not a movement — that is a generation answering a question honestly on a government form, in numbers their grandparents could not have safely matched. Whether the true share is nine or twelve, that willingness is the finding underneath the finding. We spent a long time not being asked, and longer still being defined by people who were not us. Being counted is not the same as being known. It is, however, a start.