iPod units sold

iPod units sold and the U.S. birth rate have, between 2016 and 2022, declined together at a correlation of 0.975. Two symbols of a more optimistic American future — the click-wheel music player and the new American — gently retiring at the same rate. The chart is, in its way, a small elegy.

Apple officially discontinued the last iPod Touch in 2022, after years of declining sales that fell from a few million units in 2016 to effectively zero. The U.S. birth rate fell from around 12.2 per thousand in 2016 to under 11 by 2022, continuing a decade-long decline driven by delayed family formation, housing cost pressure, and pandemic uncertainty. The two trends are not causally linked in any sense but share the same surrounding culture: a consumer electronics era ending quietly, and a demographic moment in which the population was, for the first time in generations, genuinely not replacing itself.

Seven years of two lines falling together can describe a decade saying goodbye to one device and to a certain number of children. One retirement was Apple's. The other was broader.