“Cancer Statistics, 2025” provides data on cancer occurrence and outcomes

Abstract

Every year, the American Cancer Society publishes a report on the estimated new cancer cases and deaths in the United States. The good news is that the cancer mortality rate continued to decline through 2022. Since 1991, cancer mortality has dropped by 34%; this represents an estimated 4.5 million fewer people dying of the disease. Much of this can be attributed to the prevention of smoking-related cancers, such as lung cancer, through smoking reduction and cessation. Earlier detection through screening also has contributed to the mortality reduction via preventative measures such as the removal of precancerous lesions in the cervix and colorectum and earlier detection of prostate, lung, and breast cancers. Other good news is the ongoing progress in the development of newer treatments, including more targeted therapies and immunotherapies for many cancers and optimization of established therapies.

However, the progress is uneven, with not all populations benefitting equally. Moreover, the incidence of many common cancers is increasing with a disproportionate impact on women, which is shifting the burden.

Here are a few key highlights of this year’s state of cancer as detailed in “Cancer Statistics, 2025.”¹ As in previous years, population-based data came from the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results program and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Program of Cancer Registries and were compiled by the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (for incidence data) and by the National Center for Health Statistics (for mortality data).

In total, 2,041,910 new cancer diagnoses are expected in 2025; this represents approximately 5600 cases every day. For men, the total number of estimated new cancer cases in 2025 for all sites is 1,053,250, with prostate, lung/bronchus, and colorectal cancer accounting for nearly half (48%) of all diagnoses. Prostate cancer is the most common and accounts for 30% of all new cancers in men. For women, the total number of estimated new cancer cases in 2025 for all sites is 988,660, with breast, lung, and colorectal cancer accounting for 51% of all new cases. Breast cancer remains the most common and accounts for 32% of new cancers in women.

One key new finding in the report is that the cancer burden is shifting toward women and younger adults. For men, the incidence of new cancers, primarily driven by prostate cancer, declined steeply between 2007 and 2013 and was stable through 2021. For women, however, cancer incidence gradually rose from a low of 361.2 per 100,000 in 1978 to 443.2 in 2021; this reflects an overall increase of 23%. The declining incidence in men along with this increasing incidence in women narrowed the male-to-female rate ratio to 1.1 in 2021 from its earlier peak in 1992 of 1.6. For women aged 50–64 years, the incidence rate surpassed that of men in 2021, although the rates are still statistically equivalent.

At younger ages, the shift in the male-to-female ratio is even greater. Women younger than 50 years have an 82% higher incidence rate than men—up from 51% in 2002. That is largely driven by breast and thyroid cancers, which compose 46% of cancers in this age group. As for lung cancer, women younger than 65 years have a significantly higher incidence than men for the first time because of slower declines. However, unfavorable trends also are present in men, including an increasing incidence of prostate, pancreatic, and oral cavity cancers. There is also an increasing incidence of colorectal cancer in both men and women younger than 65 years.

An estimated 618,120 people will die of cancer in 2025; this represents approximately 1700 deaths per day. Smoking continues to be the leading cause: It accounts for nearly 500 deaths each day, mainly because of lung cancer, which causes nearly 2.5 times more deaths than the second most common cancer, colorectal, and the third most common cancer, pancreatic.

Although lung cancer deaths continue to decline overall—with a 61% drop among men from the peak death rate in 1990 and a 38% drop among women from the peak in 2002, as well as more recent accelerated declines since 2013 and 2014 of up to 5% per year in men and up to 4% per year in women due to early detection and improved treatments—the burden still remains high, with most cases (43%) diagnosed at a late stage and with screening rates remaining low. Colorectal cancer also has seen sustained reductions due to screening, improved treatment, and changes in risk factors such as declines in smoking.

However, the incidence of pancreatic cancer has gradually increased. Rebecca L. Siegel, MPH, senior scientific director of Cancer Surveillance Research at the American Cancer Society and lead author of the study, cites the lagging progress for pancreatic cancer as one of the key areas of opportunity, as median survival remains less than 1 year. In the 1930s, mortality from pancreatic cancer was approximately 5 per 100,000 for both men and women, whereas today it is 13 per 100,000 for men and 10 per 100,000 for women.

Another big gap in progress, cites Ms. Siegel, is the uneven progress in survival by ethnicity. “Alarming inequalities in cancer rates persist,” she says.

As an example, she cites mortality rates among Native Americans and Black women. “Native Americans are more than twice as likely to die of kidney or stomach cancer compared to White people,” she says. “And Black women are twice as likely to die of endometrial cancer compared to women of every other racial or ethnic group.”

These disparities in mortality often are tied to social determinants of health, including socioeconomic factors such as poverty and limitations on economic upward mobility that result in more limited access to high-quality cancer prevention, early detection, and treatment.

Ms. Siegel notes that prevention strategies for reducing smoking have made progress against smoking-related cancers, but other risk factors—excess body weight, changing reproductive patterns, other established risk factors, and yet unknown factors—are likely increasing the incidence of many common cancers.

“The bottom line is that we can all reduce our risk of a cancer diagnosis by not smoking, maintaining a healthy body weight, staying physically active, eating a healthy diet high in fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grains and low in red and processed meat, not drinking or drinking in moderation, and talking to our doctor about our family cancer history and when to get screened and then getting those screenings,” she says.

“Doing all of these things will reduce your risk of dying from cancer by about half,” she adds.