As Americans prepare to celebrate the New Year, there will be more of us than ever before to don silly hats and toot plastic horns. The Census Bureau, in a projection released today, estimates the population as of Jan. 1 will be 292,287,454 -- up 2,816,586 or 1.0 percent from New Year's Day 2003. Next month, the United States is expected to register one birth every 8 seconds and one death every 13 seconds. But net immigration is expected to add one person every 25 seconds. The result, the bureau predicts, will be an increase in the total population of one person every 12 seconds.

-CQ Today Midday Update [12/29/2003]