Why Astrology, Tarot, and Numerology Are Booming: The Real Data Behind the New Age Revival

If it feels like everyone under 40 suddenly has an opinion about Mercury retrograde, checks Co-Star before checking the weather, or texts a friend a screenshot of "11:11" with a raised-eyebrow emoji, that's not your imagination. It's a measurable shift in American spiritual life, and it shows up in survey data, industry revenue figures, and academic research, not just anecdote. Pew Research Center's American Trends Panel found in October 2024 that 30% of U.S. adults consult astrology, tarot cards, or fortune tellers at least once a year — and that the appetite is heavily concentrated among younger adults, women, and people who have drifted from organized religion.

At the same time, the same Pew data collection shows that the share of Americans who call themselves religiously unaffiliated — the so-called "nones" — has nearly doubled since 2007, from 16% to 29% of U.S. adults, according to Pew's 2025 Religious Landscape Study. Among Millennials specifically, unaffiliation jumped from 26% to 37% over that same period. Those two trend lines — institutional religion declining, informal spiritual practice holding steady or growing — are not a coincidence, and researchers who study religion and secularism have been saying so for years.

This piece pulls together what's actually documented: real polling numbers, real market data on astrology and wellness apps, and real academic and journalistic explanations for why this is happening now, on this scale, on these platforms. It also takes seriously where numerology and angel numbers fit into that picture, and gives space to the genuine critiques — because a website built on honest treatment of numerology owes its readers the full, complicated picture, not just the flattering half of it.

Start with the religious landscape, because it's the best-documented part of this story. Pew's long-running tracking shows religiously unaffiliated Americans rising from 16% in 2007 to 23% in 2014 to 29% by 2023–24, with growth showing up in "every category" Pew measured — age, gender, race, and region — though the pace has slowed since 2020, hovering in the 28–31% range. Millennials show the steepest generational shift: 26% unaffiliated in 2007 versus 37% today. Crucially, Pew's research on the "nones" also found that most of them aren't strict atheists rejecting the supernatural wholesale — roughly seven in ten still believe in God or a higher power of some kind, and many still describe spirituality as important to them. They've left the pew, in other words, without necessarily leaving the search for meaning behind.

Layered on top of that is Pew's May 2025 survey specifically on astrology, tarot, and fortune-telling, which found 30% of U.S. adults consult one of the three annually, including 28% who check astrology or horoscopes and 11% who consult tarot cards. The generational and gender skew is stark: women are roughly twice as likely as men to say they believe in astrology (35% versus 18%), and that gap widens further among younger women — 43% of women under 50 say they believe in it, compared with 20% of men in the same age range. LGBTQ+ adults report especially high engagement, with 54% consulting astrology or horoscopes annually and tarot use roughly three times the general population's rate. Belief peaks in the 18–29 age bracket and declines with age — a pattern Pew and outside researchers both connect to declining religious affiliation in that same cohort, not to any special credulity of the young.

The financial numbers back up the cultural impression. IBISWorld's industry research (reported by outlets including Yahoo Finance) pegs U.S. psychic-services revenue at roughly $2 billion a year, supporting about 85,000 jobs, with the sector expanding fairly steadily since 2010 — a growth run IBISWorld explicitly ties to rising disposable income and to "changing consumer beliefs" as fewer Americans identify with organized religion. Separately, Market Research Future estimated the global astrology market at $14.3 billion in 2024, projecting growth to roughly $27 billion by 2035 at a 6% annual clip — the kind of steady-compounding growth rate more typical of an established consumer category than a passing fad.

App-specific numbers tell the same story. Co-Star, the astrology app known for its blunt, algorithmically generated push notifications, reportedly grew from about 7.5 million users in 2020 to roughly 30 million by 2023, and Axios reported the company raised a $15 million funding round in 2021 — real venture capital betting on the category, not just influencer hype. CNN reported the app had racked up 20 million downloads with minimal paid marketing as of 2021, largely through word of mouth and social sharing. By early 2025, TikTok hosted more than 4.5 million videos under the #astrology tag alone, according to reporting cited by Oxford Brookes University researchers — a volume that reflects a genuine content ecosystem, complete with its own creators, in-jokes, and recurring formats, rather than a single viral moment.

Sociologists and psychologists who study this trend generally point to a convergence of factors rather than a single cause, and it's worth being precise about what they've actually found rather than what feels intuitively true. One well-documented psychological mechanism is what researchers call "compensatory control": studies cited by Skeptical Inquirer found that people are more likely to find horoscopes credible when they've been experimentally primed to feel a loss of control over their circumstances, and that students of astrology reported more life disruptions than non-students. A separate, decades-old but still-replicated finding — the Barnum effect, named for psychologist Bertram Forer's 1948 experiment — shows that people rate vague, universally applicable personality descriptions as remarkably accurate reflections of themselves specifically, which helps explain why generic horoscopes feel so personally resonant.

The COVID-19 pandemic is the most-cited real-world trigger for the recent surge. CNN's 2021 reporting on "WitchTok" quoted York University psychology professor James Alcock explaining that pandemic-driven anxiety about the future "cries out for some kind of answer," and that occult practices provide one avenue for that reassurance; the same piece documented psychics and astrologers reporting exponential growth in their followings and client bases during lockdowns. A December 2023 qualitative study in JMIR Formative Research, examining how Generation Z and young Millennials used a spiritual self-care app called Skylight, found users turning to it specifically to manage anxiety, improve mood, and process stress — with over a third of participants identifying as "solely spiritual" rather than religious or nonreligious.

Social media architecture matters here too, not just content. Researchers describe platforms like TikTok and Instagram functioning as a kind of ambient, algorithmically delivered "digital spiritual community" — content arrives unbidden in a feed, gets remixed into memes and duets, and creates ongoing engagement loops that a once-a-week newspaper horoscope column never could. An Oxford Brookes University commentary on Gen Z spirituality also links the trend to documented religious decline in the UK, where identification with a religion fell from 75% in 1981 to 49% in 2023 — evidence this isn't a purely American phenomenon.

Numerology and angel numbers aren't a separate trend running parallel to the astrology-and-tarot boom — they're a branch of the same tree, and the reporting reflects that overlap directly. TikTok's own "angel number filter," which assigns users a recurring number sequence like 111 or 222 along with a stock interpretation, has been covered by outlets including Today.com and Parade specifically as an extension of the broader astrology-and-tarot content wave rather than as its own isolated craze. The same demographic and platform dynamics apply: young, largely female or LGBTQ+ audiences encountering short-form video content that offers quick, personalized-feeling symbolism, shareable on the same feeds and by many of the same creators who post horoscope and tarot content.

That overlap makes sense given what the data shows people are actually looking for. Angel numbers require no appointment, no app subscription, and no specialized knowledge — you just have to notice a clock or a receipt total — which lowers the barrier to entry even further than astrology apps or tarot decks do. That accessibility likely helps explain why numerology content travels so easily on algorithmic platforms: it's the smallest possible unit of meaning-making, easy to package into a 15-second video, and easy to personalize to an individual moment (a breakup, a job interview, a hard day) in exactly the way the Barnum effect predicts people will find compelling.

The case for what this trend genuinely provides people is not just marketing copy — it shows up in the qualitative research. The JMIR study on the Skylight app found users describing real benefits: relaxation, mood improvement, and a sense of grounding during stressful periods. CNN's reporting quoted UC Santa Barbara PhD candidate Ian Anthony Waller describing astrology as "a conversation where you're getting to know yourself better," and astrologer Kirah Tabourn linking the practice to self-acceptance. For people who have left organized religion but not the underlying human impulses religion once organized — community, ritual, a framework for interpreting hard moments — astrology, tarot, and numerology offer a low-commitment substitute that doesn't require doctrinal buy-in or institutional membership.

The critiques, though, are also grounded in real evidence rather than mere skepticism for its own sake. On the empirical side, Skeptical Inquirer cites double-blind research in which college students could identify their own horoscope only 46% of the time — essentially chance — while identifying their own validated personality-test results correctly 79% of the time, a direct empirical challenge to astrology's predictive claims. On the commercial side, a $14+ billion global market and a venture-funded app ecosystem raise legitimate questions about incentive: apps and creators profit from engagement and repeat consultation, and critics writing in outlets like Substack's independent spirituality-and-culture commentary have specifically flagged how subscription models and paid "premium readings" can monetize exactly the anxiety and search for control that researchers say drives people toward these practices in the first place.

The honest synthesis, consistent with how researchers themselves frame it, is that both things are true at once: the psychological benefits people report are real and worth respecting, and the commercial and evidentiary concerns are also real and worth naming. Believing an app-generated horoscope helped you make sense of a hard week doesn't require believing planetary alignments cause events on Earth, and being skeptical of the industry's business model doesn't require dismissing what the ritual does for the person using it.

• Pew Research Center — 3 in 10 Americans Consult Astrology, Tarot Cards or Fortune Tellers (2025)
• Pew Research Center — Religious Landscape Study: Religious Identity (2025)
• Pew Research Center — Religious 'Nones' in America: Who They Are and What They Believe (2024)
• IBISWorld data via Yahoo Finance — A Mysterious US Industry Has Been Growing Since the Recession: Psychic Services
• Market Research Future — Astrology Market Size, Share, Growth Report
• CNN — 'WitchTok': Amid Uncertainty, a New Fascination With Astrology and the Occult Bubbles Up (2021)
• Skeptical Inquirer — Why Are Millennials Turning to Astrology?
• JMIR Formative Research — Exploring Generation Z and Young Millennials' Perspectives of a Spiritual Self-Care App (Skylight): Qualitative Study (2023)
• Oxford Brookes University — Expert Comment: Why Is Gen Z Looking to the Stars for Meaning? (2025)
• Axios — Astrology App Co-Star Raises $15 Million in New Funding (2021)
• TODAY.com — What Are Angel Numbers? Why Numbers Like 111 and 222 Are Considered Good Luck