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What percentage of American adults always or usually feel lonely?

9% of American adults always or usually feel lonely - about 9 in every 100, or 1 in 10. That is the figure published by the Household Pulse Survey for 2026.

Where this number comes from

Survey

Household Pulse Survey

What it measured

HTOPS HPS 2607 (collected July 15 – August 3, 2026), item SOC_LONELY (“How often do you feel lonely?”), counting responses 1=Always, 2=Usually, as a share of adults who answered (3.7% did not). Computed from the Census Bureau's public-use microdata with the person weight PWEIGHT; the standard error uses its 80 successive-difference replicate weights (4/80 · Σ of squared deviations). The counts and standard errors behind it reproduce the published table health3a. Census labels these estimates experimental; unweighted n = 12,257.

Population

U.S. adults aged 18 and over

Year

2026

95% confidence interval

6.53% to 11.47% (derived from the published standard error)

Work of the U.S. federal government - public domain. See the source data

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