Despite that flood of wedding photos on your Facebook news feed, married people are not taking over the world. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, single adults now outnumber married adults for the first time since 1976 when they first began tracking the data. 
 
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 It's by a very slim margin, but nevertheless, WE SINGLES ARE THE CHAMPIONS. Via the New York Post: 
 
 There were 124.6 million single Americans in August, accounting for 50.2 percent of the 16-and-over US population, BLS data showed. That number has been hovering just below the 50 percent mark since 2013, before finally getting over the majority hurdle this summer. Back in 1976, the unmarried crowd accounted for 37.4 percent of the adult population and it's been trending upward ever since. 
 
 The BLS data includes different classifications of singles, not just millennials who are afraid of what lies beyond their iPhone screens. 
 
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 Unmarried adults split about 3-to-2 in favor of those who have never walked down the aisle (30.4 percent) compared to divorcees, widows and widowers (19.8 percent). In 1976, those figures were closer at 22.1 percent and 15.3 percent, respectively. 
 
 So swipe right on Tinder proudly and enjoy not having to regularly share your bed comforter with any damn body, for you, the single, are one of the unchosen majority. 
 
 ||||| Single Americans make up more than half of the adult population for the first time since the government began compiling such statistics in 1976. 
 
 Some 124.6 million Americans were single in August, 50.2 percent of those who were 16 years or older, according to data used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in its monthly job-market report. That percentage had been hovering just below 50 percent since about the beginning of 2013 before edging above it in July and August. In 1976, it was 37.4 percent and has been trending upward since. 
 
 In a report to clients entitled “Selfies,” economist Edward Yardeni flagged the increase in the proportion of singles to more than 50 percent, calling it “remarkable.” The president of Yardeni Research Inc. in New York said the rise has “implications for our economy, society and politics.” 
 
 Related: Financial Strategies for the New Single Majority 
 
 Singles, particularly younger ones, are more likely to rent than to own their dwellings. Never-married young singles are less likely to have children and previously married older ones, many of whom have adult children, are unlikely to have young kids, Yardeni wrote. That will influence how much money they spend and what they buy. 
 
 He argued the increase in single-person households also is exaggerating income inequality in the U.S. 
 
 “While they have less household earnings than married people, they also have fewer expenses, especially if there are no children in their households,” Yardeni wrote. 
 
 The percentage of adult Americans who have never married has risen to 30.4 percent from 22.1 percent in 1976, while the proportion that are divorced, separated or widowed increased to 19.8 percent from 15.3 percent, according to the economist. 
 
 Yardeni is known in the financial markets for coining the phrase “bond vigilantes” in the 1980s to describe investors who were selling Treasury securities because of fears about big U.S. budget deficits. 
 
 To contact the reporter on this story: Rich Miller in Washington at rmiller28@bloomberg.net 
 
 To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chris Wellisz at cwellisz@bloomberg.net Gail DeGeorge, Melinda Grenier ||||| A record number of people in the U.S. now live by themselves — and they spend $1.9 trillion a year. Businesses are beginning to take notice. 
 
 By Eric Klinenberg, contributor 
 
 FORTUNE — In 1957, University of Michigan psychology professors Joseph Veroff, Elizabeth Douvan, and Richard Kulka released a survey that examined American attitudes to being single. The findings were stark: 80% of those surveyed believed that people who preferred being unmarried were “sick,” “immoral,” or “neurotic.” At a time when more than 70% of adults were married, it’s not surprising that people would express a preference for wedded life. But the scorn certainly sounds jarring to contemporary ears. 
 
 Oh, how things have changed. Americans are now within mere percentage points of being a majority single nation: Only 51% of adults today are married, according to census data. And 28% of all households now consist of just one person — the highest level in U.S. history. That second statistic may appear less dramatic than the first, but it’s actually changing much faster: The percentage of Americans living by themselves has doubled since 1960. 
 
 The extraordinary rise of living alone is among the greatest social changes since the baby boom. Until recently, no culture in human history had sustained large numbers of people in places of their own. Today more than 40% of households have just one occupant in cities such as Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Denver, St. Louis, and Seattle. In Manhattan, nearly 50% of households consist of a single occupant, a number that seems impossibly high until you discover that the rate is similar in London and Paris, and even higher — a staggering 60% — in Stockholm. 
 
 Conventional wisdom is that singletons, the term I’ll use for those who live alone, tend to be lonely and isolated, perhaps even social failures. Big-idea books such as Bowling Alone and The Lonely American have portrayed the U.S. as a disconnected society full of loners. A steady stream of TV pundits and marriage advocates warn that being uncoupled jeopardizes our wealth, well-being, and longevity. 
 
 But after conducting more than 300 interviews and reviewing mountains of economic, sociological, and historical evidence, I’ve concluded that the conventional wisdom has it wrong. In fact, most people who live alone do it by choice. Many will pair up with a romantic partner eventually, but given that relationships often don’t last a lifetime, singletons are reluctant to settle. The proof is what comes out of their pocketbooks, since they willingly pay a premium for the privilege of living alone. 
 
 The consequences of widespread solo living are profound but unappreciated, shaping our families and communities, our relationships, and ourselves — and not in the ways you might imagine. Singletons play an essential yet unappreciated role in revitalizing cities and animating public spaces. Compared with married people, they’re more likely to eat out in cafés and restaurants, exercise in a gym, take art classes, attend public events, and volunteer. 
 
 Perhaps more important, singletons are fueling the economy. They spend more discretionary dollars than their married counterparts. Their average per capita annual expenditure was $34,471 in 2010, according to the federal Consumer Expenditure survey, compared with $28,017 for married individuals without kids and $23,179 per person in the highest-spending families with children. 
 
 It’s a simple but powerful equation: Increasing numbers of singletons, combined with high income, equal rising economic clout. Indeed, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that consumption by U.S. singles contributes $1.9 trillion to the economy annually. 
 
 Historically, corporations have made little effort to target singletons. But their purchasing power has grown so dramatically that companies are beginning to pay attention: Realtors such as Coldwell Banker are soliciting singletons. Home-improvement giant Lowe’s (LOW) released a TV advertisement featuring a lone woman who is renovating her bathroom. Iconic car-brand Chevrolet ran an ad in which a single woman responds to a bad date by going for a drive in a Malibu with a female friend. Even DeBeers, which long pitched its diamonds as the embodiment of a couple’s romantic bond, has sold a “right-hand ring” for unmarried women who want to treat themselves to elegant jewelry. Singletons are a rising presence — and American business has only begun to respond. 
 
 The transition to adulthood 
 
 The Great Recession forced many Americans to make sacrifices, and Marsha Figaro is no exception. Although she’s kept her job as the director of outreach and special programs at Northwestern University, the outgoing 33-year-old has cut back on extravagances like international travel and expensive meals and become a bargain hunter. She even sold her condominium after her neighborhood began to feel unstable. But rather than seek out roommates, she rented a one-bedroom apartment in Chicago’s buzzing Lakeview neighborhood, where thousands of other singles live. 
 
 “I absolutely love having my own apartment,” Figaro says. “I can do what I want, when I want to do it, whether it’s eating, watching Hulu, going out, or just going to sleep. I definitely want to move in with someone when I find the right person. But it would be hard to give up all of this.” 
 
 The daughter of Afro-Caribbean immigrants, Figaro broke from family tradition by moving into her own place in her twenties. “I was euphoric when I got my apartment,” she recounts. “It was totally liberating. I didn’t want to wait around my parents’ house until I found a husband. I wanted to start my life.” 
 
 A majority of American singletons are, like Figaro, women: about 18 million, compared with 14 million men. Her age group, those 18 to 34 years old, has the smallest number living on their own, but it’s growing the fastest: from 500,000 in 1950 to 5 million today. (The biggest category, more than 16 million, consists of those between 35 and 64, making this in part a phenomenon of the baby boom. See chart above for more details.) 
 
 The economic downturn has deprived many young people of the means to go solo, leading some to label the current crop of young adults the “boomerang generation,” as twentysomethings moved back home. But despite this recent erosion, the long-term trend is undeniable. In 1950, 1% of Americans 20 to 29 lived alone. That figure rose to 11.97% in 2007, right before the financial crisis, and then slipped to 10.94% in 2011. 
 
 For young, never-married adults in Figaro’s situation, having a place of one’s own is a mark of success. And with people marrying later than ever, living alone is a fundamental way to make the transition to adulthood. 
 
 But single life is a collective experience, at least in cities, because the concentrations of solo dwellers help generate what the journalist Ethan Watters calls “urban tribes,” social networks that substitute for traditional families. In Chicago, Figaro and her group of single girlfriends meet up in bars, restaurants, parties, and clubs. They encounter similar tribes, some all male, some with a gender mix. 
 
 Uri Ratner, a handsome 39-year-old who lives alone and runs an eight-person digital creative agency out of his loft in the West Loop, socializes five or six nights a week. “To be honest,” he says, “my biggest problem is that I have too many things going on in my schedule. I overcommit. I love online dating, and I know I should be doing it more often. But I’m too busy. Between work and all my friends here, I just don’t have the time.” 
 
 Ironically, the 24/7 work culture, which has shattered the barriers between personal and professional life, makes living alone more attractive. After all, long work hours mean plenty of interaction at the office. Says one television producer: “I’m surrounded by a lot of people with similar interests. I do a lot of interacting, talking, e-mail, bopping down the hall to discuss a story or just shoot the shit.” His work friends are his most common companions. 
 
 Although pundits worry that singletons become socially isolated, for most the reverse is true. Young urban professionals struggle more with avoiding the distraction of social activity than with being disconnected. Surprisingly, the middle-age singletons I interviewed, most of whom are divorced, express similar concerns: They reported that living alone has become intensely social — not only because of the Internet and online dating, but also because they live in places filled with people in the same situation who are eager to be with each other. They were also the most likely to say, as one woman in her sixties put it, “There’s nothing lonelier than being in the wrong relationship.” In the abstract, they prefer to live with a romantic partner. But in real life they’re unlikely to compromise on a companion. 
 
 Where singletons go to live 
 
 One reason solo life has become so appealing is that contemporary cities offer abundant residential options for people who want a central location but don’t need much space. Apartments designed for single inhabitants, though sometimes available in the past, didn’t become common until the 1960s, when developers began to recognize the rising demand. Neighborhood cultures developed around single life: Lakeview in Chicago. The Marina District in San Francisco. Belltown in Seattle. These weren’t bohemias but places for urban professionals, the young and never married as well as divorcés. Solo living was suddenly in vogue. 
 
 In recent years a few developers have targeted affluent singletons. Related Companies, a privately owned Manhattan-based real estate firm with more than $15 billion in real estate assets, has invested heavily in the high end of the rental market, and is enjoying tremendous success despite the sluggish housing market. 
 
 In May 2011, Related opened MiMA (for Middle of Manhattan), a 63-story tower west of Times Square with rental units, a hip hotel with a booming bar scene, and a theater designed by Frank Gehry. It also boasts a swanky health club, sun terraces, an outdoor movie screen, a billiards lounge, three party rooms, and a canine spa and walking service. MiMA has 814 rental apartments, 641 of which are studios or one-bedrooms. Some 65% of occupants live alone. Although MiMA is expensive (studios start at $3,600 a month), six months after opening more than 90% of the apartments were leased. 
 
 Related’s strategy is based on extensive market research. “Our niche demographic is households with more than $100,000 in income,” says Joanna Rose, a vice president at Related. “They’re looking for luxury buildings with high-end services. They are getting a lifestyle, not choosing an apartment on the cost of rent alone.” Related has similar properties in Boston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, and the company recently broke ground on another luxury rental tower in Chicago. 
 
 None of this should suggest that singletons are interested only in rental apartments. On the contrary, housing purchases by singles — women, especially — have spiked in recent decades. Singles buy one-third of the homes in the U.S. today. Unmarried men and women account for 10% and 21% of all buyers, respectively, according to the National Association of Realtors. 
 
 Multiple factors have opened housing to single women. They range from the rapid influx of women into the paid labor market and laws prohibiting lenders from rejecting applicants on the basis of sex or marital status to the divorce revolution and the delay in age of marriage. 
 
 Realty giant Coldwell Banker has taken notice. Says Coldwell CEO Jim Gillespie: “Our salespeople are aware of this demographic and actually actively go after it. I go on the road all the time and tell all of our associates not to forget about single buyers because they’re everywhere.” 
 
 Single women’s relative economic success is only part of the reason they have become the fastest-growing participants in the housing market. After all, men continue to earn more — but males in their thirties and early forties show little interest in buying a home. Not long ago most women viewed getting married as the key moment in the transition to adulthood. But for a growing number, buying a home has become a powerful way to pivot from one life stage into another. It’s a signal, to themselves and to those who know them, that they’re embracing their independence and that they’re ready to invest in themselves. 
 
 The power of one wallet 
 
 Till now, the real estate market has been more attentive to singletons than most other industries. But consciousness is beginning to bubble up, particularly in businesses such as food and alcohol, says David Eastman, the North American CEO of advertising behemoth JWT. For example, he says, “if you look back at how alcohol was marketed in the U.S., it was generally done in a way that promoted people in couples as the aspirational thing to be rather than people in communities or people with friends.” He says a longtime agency client, vodka maker Smirnoff, recently began emphasizing images of friends in groups. Similarly, JWT analyzed restaurant design not long ago: “They’re going much more with communal tables,” Eastman says, “making it much easier for individual people to mingle rather than going for the twos or the fours, which are the couples or the family seating.” 
 
 The evidence of singletons’ buying power is beginning to emerge: in packaged foods, where Nestlé’s research shows that 90% of its Lean Cuisine meals are eaten alone (the company says it tried — and failed — to sell meals that could be shared by two people); in home furnishings, where Ikea reports that sales of products for “small space” living (where a single person is more likely to reside) are rising; to travel, where Norwegian Cruise Line has begun offering special “studio staterooms” for solo travelers. 
 
 These changes can’t happen fast enough for Sherri Langburt, whose website, SingleEdition.com, offers advice and products for successful people who live alone. “Everything online for singles was about dating,” she says, explaining why she launched the site in 2007. “But when I lived alone, my life wasn’t all about dating. I had a lot of other concerns, things I wanted to learn about or try, and there were no resources to support my lifestyle. No good information about things like traveling alone or cooking for one. Obviously I wasn’t the only person interested in content like that.” Langburt argues that what has happened in recent decades with selling to senior citizens — a slow recognition of the market’s importance — will occur with singles. 
 
 The impediment, Langburt and others say, is that many advertisers believe singletons don’t identify primarily by that label — a point Langburt vehemently disputes — and can’t be targeted that way. Companies market to boomers or thirtysomethings or affluent city dwellers, any of whom may happen to be single. But most advertising conveys an aspirational message, and marketers don’t think anyone aspires to be on their own. 
 
 “I think companies still regard [singles] as a niche rather than the majority,” says JWT’s Eastman. “But I sense that if the statistics keep going the way they are, it will end up being the majority.” European countries already display higher rates of living alone than in the U.S., and there are sharp increases in emerging markets such as China, India, and Brazil; that suggests that many choose to live alone whenever there’s sufficient wealth and comfort. For them, it isn’t punishment — it’s liberation. 
 
 Eric Klinenberg is a professor of sociology at New York University. His new book, Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone, © 2012, from which this article was adapted for the February 6, 2012 issue of Fortune, will be published by the Penguin Press on Feb. 6. 
 
 –Reporter associates: Daniel Roberts and Doris Burke ||||| More people in the United States are apparently leaving wedding rings sitting in jewelry stores, as new data shows a majority of American adults are now single. 
 
 Specifically, about 50.2 percent of American adults over the age of 16 – roughly 124.6 million people – were single in August, according to a new Bureau of Labor Statistics report cited by Bloomberg. This marks the first time that single Americans make up the majority of the adult population since the government began tracking the data 38 years ago. 
 
 In 1976, single Americans made up 37.4 percent of the adult population. The number of individuals who have never been married also rose to 30.4 percent, up notably from 22.1 more than three decades ago. Divorced Americans, meanwhile, now compose 19.8 percent of the population, compared to 15.3 percent in 1976. 
 
 As these numbers continued to rise, economist Edward Yardeni said the development will have significant ripple effects for the economic, social and political scenes in the United States. 
 
 According to Yardeni, who penned a letter to clients on Tuesday, single Americans as a group generally prefer to rent housing rather than own it outright, and they are less likely to have children. These trends mean that changes in spending will also be on the way. 
 
 Although single Americans were not yet the majority in 2012, a report by Fortune at the time had already started documenting some of these changes, noting that so-called “Singletons” were contributing close to $2 trillion to the US economy every year. 
 
 “They spend more discretionary dollars than their married counterparts,” Eric Klinenberg wrote for the magazine. “Their average per capita annual expenditure was $34,471 in 2010, according to the federal Consumer Expenditure survey, compared with $28,017 for married individuals without kids and $23,179 per person in the highest-spending families with children.” 
 
 Yardeni also said that the rise of single households could be making the income inequality gap seem worse than it really is. 
 
 “While they have less household earnings than married people, they also have fewer expenses, especially if there are no children in their households,” Yardeni wrote, according to Bloomberg. 
 
 As single people are bolstering the economy in some ways, a continued trend of childless households could also mean significant challenges for the US population in the long term. As noted by TheBlaze, the choice to have fewer children has left countries like Japan facing big demographic problems, as fewer people are left to replace those who retire and leave the workforce. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Census Bureau found that in 2013, the US population grew at its lowest rate since the Great Depression, primarily due to low birth rates and lower immigration activity as a result of a slow economic recovery.
– On your own? You're in good company. Just north of half of Americans over the age of 16—50.2% of them, or 124.6 million, to be specific—are single, the Bureau of Labor Statistics finds. It's the first time a majority have been single since such record-keeping began in 1976, Bloomberg reports. Back then, the percentage of singles was 37.4%. A few other relevant numbers: The percentage of Americans who've never tied the knot is now 30.4%, compared to 22.1% in 1976, while the percentage of divorced people is 19.8%, versus 15.3% in 1976, RT reports. The number of unmarried people is significant when it comes to the economy, expert Edward Yardeni tells Bloomberg. "They spend more discretionary dollars than their married counterparts," a Fortune article last year noted, as cited by RT, and they plow $2 trillion into the economy each year. But their habits could misleadingly boost the appearance of income inequality, Yardeni says: "While they have less household earnings than married people, they also have fewer expenses, especially if there are no children in their households." At Jezebel, Kara Brown calls on fellow singles to celebrate: "Swipe right on Tinder proudly and enjoy not having to regularly share your bed comforter."