In a 2025 article in the Journal of Family Issues, Michael Rosenfeld analyzes how the pandemic reshaped dating and relationship formation in the United States. Drawing on nationally representative data from the How Couples Meet and Stay Together (HCMST) study, he documents a sharp rise in singleness during the pandemic: the proportion of U.S. adults identifying as single increased from 18.9% in 2017 to 24.3% in 2022. This translates to an increase of more than 10 million additional single adults (even after adjusting for age).

The research shows that this increase was not driven by declines in marriage or cohabitation, but by the fragility of informal, non-cohabiting relationships. Pandemic barriers—social distancing, closures of public spaces, and lingering fears of infection—disrupted opportunities for forming new romantic ties. Young adults, who are most active in the dating market, were disproportionately affected. Strikingly, even after vaccines became widely available and public life largely reopened, the rise in singleness persisted.

Rosenfeld argues that this “pandemic dating recession” has been overlooked because official statistics focus narrowly on marriage and cohabitation. By spotlighting casual and non-marital relationships, the study underscores their vulnerability to external shocks and their importance to broader patterns of intimacy and social life.