The percentage of U.S. adults who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or something other than heterosexual has continued to rise, hitting an all-time high of 9.3%, up from 7.6% in 2023, according to a Gallup report released Thursday.
Jeff Jones, senior editor at Gallup, said in a phone interview that he didn’t expect that increase to happen so fast.
“I didn’t think we would get to 10% as quickly,” Jones said. “We’re not quite there yet, but it seems like maybe it’s only a few years away, where before I thought it could have been a couple decades or so. We’re getting pretty close to that 1 in 10 figure, which I think would be a notable milestone.”
Gallup conducted random telephone interviews over the last year with 14,000 adults living in all 50 states and found that about 900 identified as LGBTQ. The survey reported margins of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points among LGBTQ respondents.
The increase in LGBTQ identification over the last year, Jones said, is due to more of Generation Z, who are 19 to 28, reaching adulthood. Nearly one-quarter, 23.1%, of Gen Z identify as LGBTQ, according to the Gallup report, compared with 14.2% of millennials, who are 29 to 44; 5.1% of Generation X, who are 45 to 60; 3% of baby boomers, who are 61 to 79; and 1.8% of those 80 and older.
“The more Gen Z people who become adults, the higher that number is going to go,” Jones said.
Over the last few years, LGBTQ identification among U.S. adults leveled off, at 7.6% in 2023, up only slightly from 7.2% in 2022.
Jones noted that the last time Gallup recorded a more significant increase in the percentage in LGBTQ identification was in 2021, when 7.1% of U.S. adults reported that they are something other than heterosexual, up 5.6% in 2020.
LGBTQ identification has nearly tripled over the 12 years that Gallup has tracked it, according to Thursday’s report, with just 3.5% of U.S. adults saying they identified within the community in 2012.
Jones noted that one reason more younger people identify as LGBTQ is that they are much more likely than older generations to identify as bisexual. More than half, or 56.3%, of all LGBTQ adults in the U.S. identify as bisexual, according to the new report, but that percentage drops drastically among older people.
More than half of Gen Z LGBTQ adults, 59%, are bisexual, compared with 52% of LGBTQ millennials, 44% of Generation X, 19% of baby boomers and 11% of those 80 and older. Older LGBTQ adults are most likely to identify as gay or lesbian, Gallup found.
Bisexuality is more common among women than men, Jones said, “and particularly younger women are most likely to identify as bisexual, and by extension, LGBTQ+.”
Nearly one-third, 31%, of Gen Z women versus 12% of Gen Z men identify as LGBTQ, with most identifying as bisexual, according to the report. Nearly 1 in 5, or 18%, of millennial women identify as LGBTQ versus 9% of millennial men.
The percentage of U.S. adults who are transgender continues to be very small, at 1.3%, according to the Gallup report. Generation Z is more likely than any other generation to identify as trans, at 4.1%, compared to 1.7% of millennials, 0.6% of Generation X, 0.2% of baby boomers and less than 0.1% for those 80 and older.
The report also found that LGBTQ identification differs by political orientation, with 14% of Democrats identifying as LGBTQ, compared with 11% of independents and 3% of Republicans.
