According to estimates, about 16.6 million Jews were alive in 1939. The Holocaust, carried out by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, claimed more than 6 million of them. Today, the number stands at roughly 14.8 million, according to the Pew Research Center.
Between 2010 and 2020, the global Jewish population increased by 6.2%, from 13.91 million to 14.8 million. During the same period, the non-Jewish global population grew by 12.3%, from 7 billion to 7.87 billion.
“During this period, the rest of the world’s population grew at roughly twice the rate,” Pew said in its analysis. Jews now make up just 0.2% of the world’s population, making them the smallest religious group analyzed separately in the report.
Findings come at a time of heightened sensitivity, as Jewish communities worldwide confront a spike in antisemitism amid the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
“Has the Jewish people recovered from the loss of those killed in the Holocaust? The answer is no,” said Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University. “It takes a long time to replace a third of the population. That still hasn’t happened. This is a reminder of how many people we lost in the Holocaust.”
Pew researchers noted the difficulty in precisely measuring the Jewish population. In Israel, estimates are based on the Interior Ministry’s population registry. Outside Israel, the definition generally relies on self-identification with Judaism as a religion.
The report found that most Jews live either in North America—primarily in the United States—or in the Middle East and North Africa, almost exclusively in Israel. Jews account for less than 2% of the total population in both of those regions.
From 2010 to 2020, the Jewish population in the Middle East-North Africa region grew by nearly 18%, reaching close to 7 million. North America saw a 1% increase, while the Asia-Pacific region recorded a 2% rise.
In contrast, the Jewish population declined in three other regions. Sub-Saharan Africa saw a 37% drop, from 80,000 to 50,000. Europe’s Jewish population decreased by 8%, from 1.39 million to 1.3 million. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the number fell to 390,000, a 12% decline.
“Between 2010 and 2020, the Middle East and North Africa overtook North America as the region with the largest Jewish population,” Pew said. “This is because Israel added over one million Jews to its population during that decade, compared to only 30,000 in the United States.”
Jewish shares of regional populations remained relatively stable over the decade, though Pew reported a slight decline of about 0.1 percentage point in North America.
Sarna noted that in many Western countries, Jewish birth rates are lower than those of the general population, except among ultra-Orthodox Jews.
“In many Western societies, Jewish birthrates are lower than among non-Jews,” Sarna said. “Except for Haredi Jews, who marry younger and tend to have large families.”