POP gives you the population data for the United States.
You can put the scale to log-scale so you view the same percentage changes in the data across the data series.
What you can see here is a slightly different view. The pace of growth from 1975-1986 continued forward until today shows were are on that same pace of 11% growth over 11 years.
Prior to 1975 the pace was running at 13% over 11 years. And the 11 years before that it was 22%. And the big post-WWII population growth was 22% over 11 years.
The net of it all is that the population is up 50% since 1975, or 46 years, which is roughly 1% per year.
These are good numbers to have at your fingertips for long term calculations.