What Percentage of US Women Are Single? (2026 Statistics)

Never-married women by age group

The steepest change in marital status happens between the 18-24 and 25-34 age brackets. At 18-24, marriage is still rare: 85% of women in this group have never married, and only about 2% are divorced or separated. By 25-34, the never-married share has dropped to 45%, meaning a slight majority of women in this bracket have been married at least once.

By ages 35-44, only 20% of women have never married. However, this is also the bracket where prior marriages have had the most time to dissolve: 22% of women aged 35-44 are divorced or separated. Combining the two groups, roughly 42% of women in this age range are not currently in an intact first marriage, though many have remarried or are in long-term relationships.

Differences by race and ethnicity

Marital status varies substantially across racial and ethnic groups. Census data shows that among women aged 25-34, 68% of Black women have never married, compared with 48% of Asian women, 42% of white women, and 38% of Hispanic women. The gap persists into the 35-44 bracket, where 45% of Black women have never married versus roughly 18-22% of women in other groups.

Hispanic women marry earliest on average: only 38% of Hispanic women aged 25-34 have never married, the lowest share of any major group. Asian women show a distinctive pattern of late but frequent marriage, with 92% never married at 18-24 falling to 20% by 35-44, along with the lowest divorce rates of any group at every age.

Single is bigger than never married

Because divorce returns previously married women to unmarried status, the total not-currently-married share is higher than the never-married share at every age past 24. Adding never-married and divorced or separated women together, about 57% of women aged 25-34 and about 42% of women aged 35-44 are not currently married.

At the same time, not married does not mean available. Pew Research Center's studies of American singles consistently find that a large minority of unmarried adults are cohabiting with a partner, and a further share describe themselves as in a committed relationship. Pew's 2023 survey work found that roughly half of unpartnered adults were not looking to date at all. Any realistic estimate of the dating pool therefore needs to discount the raw unmarried numbers considerably.

Why the single share keeps growing

The never-married share of young women has risen steadily for five decades. The Census Bureau's historical marital status series shows the median age at first marriage for American women climbing from about 20.8 in 1970 to roughly 28.5 today. Later marriage mechanically raises the fraction of women who are unmarried at any given age under 35.

Researchers attribute the shift to a combination of rising female educational attainment and workforce participation, the normalization of cohabitation before marriage, and declining religious pressure to marry early. The General Social Survey documents a long-run decline in the share of Americans who say marriage is essential to a fulfilling life. None of these forces show signs of reversing, so the single share of women under 35 is likely to keep edging upward.

Run the numbers yourself

Marital status is only one filter. The Female Partner Calculator combines never-married status with age, education, political views, and other measurable criteria to estimate what share of US women matches a full set of preferences, using the same Census and CDC data cited in this article.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• U.S. Census Bureau, Marital Status Tables (ACS B12002)
• U.S. Census Bureau, Historical Marital Status Tables
• Pew Research Center, The Landscape of Marriage and Cohabitation in the U.S.
• General Social Survey, NORC at the University of Chicago