From 2001 to 2017, the number of Americans speaking Italian at home dropped from almost 900,000 to just over 550,000, an incredible 38% reduction in just 16 years. Among languages with at least 100,000 US speakers in 2001, no language saw a larger decrease, in either absolute or percentage terms—though Hungarian was close by percentage. The data is from the US Census. [...]
The first one is very simple. There are many fewer Italian-born residents of the US today. The population fell from about 530,000 in 2001 to under 400,000 in 2017. This explains about 40% of the fall in Italian speakers. The lack of migration to the US is largely due to the increasing prosperity of Italy across second half of the 20th century—while US GDP per person was almost double that of Italy in 1960, it is only about 50% greater today. [...]
The other 60% of the fall is mostly accounted for by assimilation. From 1930 to 1970, there were more foreign-born residents of the US from Italy than any other country. As these immigrants die and their descendants start families in which they speak primarily English, the number of Italian speakers dwindles further. The number of German speakers in the US is falling for similar reasons.
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