Gallup: US LGBTQ population hovers at 7% 

The scene in the Village during Pride Sunday in 2021.
The scene in the Village during Pride Sunday in 2021.
Donna Aceto

The share of Americans who self-identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or something other than heterosexual remained at around 7% in 2022, according to a new Gallup poll.

The latest poll found that 7.2% of people in America identify as LGBTQ, which is consistent with 7.1% reported last year in the same poll. Gallup’s data was pulled from interviews with more than 10,000 adults.

Bisexual individuals represent an outright majority of the LGBTQ community in the United States, making up 4.2% of all US adults or 58% of the LGBTQ community. Gay adults make up 20.2% of the LGBTQ community compared to 13% for lesbian Americans and 8.8% for transgender folks. 

Transgender people make up .6% of US adults, while gay people make up 1.4% of the US population and lesbians represent 1% of the US population. 

The poll also found that 86% of adults in the US are “straight or heterosexual” and 7% did not disclose their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Furthermore, 1.7% of the LGBTQ adults identify as pansexual, 1.3% identify as asexual, 1.8% identify as “other LGBT,” and  1.2% of LGBTQ adults identify as queer. 

Not surprisingly, the numbers continue to show greater percentages of younger people identifying as LGBTQ. Roughly 20% of Generation Z individuals who were between 18 and 25 years of age in 2022 said they identify as LGBTQ. That number is nearly twice as high as millennials (11.2%). Within Gen Z, 13.1% are bisexual, 3.4% are gay, 2.2% are lesbian, and 1.9% are trans.

The percentage of Americans identifying as LGBTQ has more than doubled in the last decade. In 2012, just 3.5% of the population identified as LGBTQ. The number surpassed 4% in 2016.

Visit Gallup.com to see complete numbers from the poll.