Cancer remains the second leading cause of death in the U.S., with the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbating delays in diagnosis and potentially worsening disparities and mortality. In 2025, an estimated 2,041,910 new invasive cancer cases and 618,120 deaths are expected, with roughly one in three men and women likely to be diagnosed in their lifetime.
Lung cancer continues to be the deadliest, causing nearly 2.5 times more deaths than the next leading cancer, with smoking responsible for almost 500 deaths daily. The most common diagnoses are prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women, together accounting for about half of new cases.
Overall cancer incidence is stable or slowly rising, but younger women under 50 are seeing the largest increases, driven by breast and thyroid cancers. Their incidence rate is now 82% higher than in men of the same age, highlighting a shifting risk pattern. Despite this, declining death rates since the early 1990s have averted an estimated 3.8 million cancer deaths through 2022.