Through August, US deaths in 2026 are running about 2% below the same months of 2025. That looks odd for a country with more people over 65 than ever before. The explanation is that two different things move the death count, and they work on different timescales.
Aging pushes deaths up slowly and steadily. Between 2019 and 2025 the number of deaths rose 8.5%. The age-adjusted death rate, which strips out the effect of the population getting older and larger, rose only 1.5% over the same stretch. Nearly all of the long-run rise is demographics, not people dying faster at any given age.
A single bad winter can move deaths by more than aging does in a year. Since 2019, aging has added roughly 1% a year to the death count. The gap between 2025 and 2026 is in January to March, when 801,609 people died, 44,040 fewer (5.2%) than the 845,649 who died in those months of 2025. From April through August the two years are within 0.3% of each other.
The winter of 2025 was a severe flu season. Influenza was recorded as the underlying cause of 11,270 deaths in January to March 2025, the most of any winter in our monthly data since 2018, and 13,852 for the full year, the most of any year in the CDC series back to 1999 (the previous high was 11,164 in 2018). In January to March 2026 the count was 5,496.
Flu deaths on death certificates explain only about 5,800 of the 44,000 fewer winter deaths. That is expected. Many people who die of influenza are certified as dying of pneumonia, heart failure or another condition the flu set off, so the recorded number understates what a bad flu season does. The pneumonia and influenza group together was 56,617 deaths in 2025, up from 48,139 in 2024. A harsh winter can also take people who were already frail, which leaves fewer deaths for the following year.
Two cautions. The 2026 months are provisional and get revised upward for a few months, so part of the gap may close. And this is one comparison against an unusually bad year, so it says little about the trend. With the population still aging, the death count should resume its slow climb unless winters stay mild.
Explore the monthly series on Death Statistics.