German › Culture › German in America: Statistics
This page collects what the U.S. Census actually says about German America. Every figure is pulled from a named Census table and dated, and the charts are free to reproduce — there is a copy-paste embed under each one.
Journalists and researchers: every figure on this page is free to cite and every chart is free to reproduce — there is a copy-paste embed under each one. All we ask is the credit link.
Full permissions, methodology and CSV downloads are on our press & data page — including the exact Census table numbers behind every figure here.
1. The gap between ancestry and language
| Measure (2023) | People | Census table |
|---|---|---|
| Report German ancestry | 40,502,214 | B04006, ACS 1-year |
| Speak German at home | 860,992 | B16001, ACS 5-year |
| Were born in Germany | 533,419 | B05006, ACS 5-year |
In four years the number of German speakers fell from 903,880 in 2019 to 860,992 in 2023 — a drop of 4.7%.
Two world wars did to German in America what no other heritage language endured. German was widely taught and widely printed in the United States before 1917; it was suppressed during the First World War and largely abandoned in the Second. The 40 million figure is the memory of that community. The 861,000 is what is left of its voice.
2. How that compares with the other heritage languages
Set the three biggest European heritage groups in America side by side and a pattern appears: the larger the ancestry group, the smaller the share that still speaks the language.
| Language | Claim the ancestry | Speak it at home | Roughly |
|---|---|---|---|
| German | 40,502,214 | 860,992 | 1 in 47 |
| Italian | 16,110,022 | 525,930 | 1 in 31 |
| Polish | 8,243,708 | 514,558 | 1 in 16 |
3. Where the language survives — and where it did not
| State | German ancestry | Speak German at home | Speakers per 100 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Massachusetts | 384,315 | 16,921 | 4.40 |
| California | 2,686,525 | 92,993 | 3.46 |
| Florida | 1,956,800 | 61,416 | 3.14 |
| New York | 1,737,744 | 49,382 | 2.84 |
| Texas | 2,466,166 | 64,355 | 2.61 |
| Illinois | 2,071,360 | 30,630 | 1.48 |
| Ohio | 2,641,479 | 38,893 | 1.47 |
| Wisconsin | 2,143,886 | 27,851 | 1.30 |
| Pennsylvania | 2,822,540 | 36,199 | 1.28 |
| Minnesota | 1,695,142 | 17,362 | 1.02 |
The German heartland has the least German left. Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin are three of the five largest German-ancestry states — 2.8, 2.6 and 2.1 million — and all three sit at the bottom of the table: 1.28, 1.47 and 1.30 speakers per 100. The top of the table is Massachusetts and California, which have far fewer German-Americans but much more German being spoken, because their German speakers are recent arrivals rather than descendants.
Use the whole thing
If you would rather not rebuild any of this, here is the complete widget — headline numbers and both charts in one block. It carries its own styling, so it needs no CSS or JavaScript from us.
Methodology and sources
Source: U.S. Census Bureau. Ancestry from the American Community Survey 1-year estimates 2023, table B04006. Language from ACS 5-year estimates 2023, table B16001. Place of birth from ACS 5-year 2023, table B05006. The speakers-per-100 ratio was calculated by us from B16001 and B04006 and is not a Census Bureau statistic. Retrieved from data.census.gov, August 2026.
Census Bureau output is a work of the U.S. federal government and is in the public domain. Ancestry figures use 1-year estimates; language and place-of-birth figures use 5-year estimates, which are more reliable for smaller populations. This page is updated when new ACS estimates are released.
📬 If these numbers are about your family
Most people who find this page are on the wrong side of that gap — among the millions who claim the ancestry, not the few who kept the language. We send a tiny German lesson every few days: a word worth knowing, the audio to hear it, and the story behind it. Free forever.
Free · unsubscribe anytime