Abstract: Urban shrinkage is a global problem, which has a great impact on the traditional growth-oriented urban planning and development. The contradiction between urban shrinkage and urban expansion exists for a long time in China. It is of great significance to explore the characteristics of land use efficiency in those identified shrinking cities for regulating the relationship between urban development and land use, and promoting sustainable use of urban lands. Based on the dimensions of population and economy, this study comprehensively identified the shrinking cities in the urban agglomeration of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River from 2012 to 2021 at the scale of counties, county-level cities, and municipal districts. The super efficiency SBM model was used to calculate land use efficiency. The global Malmquist index was introduced to analyze the changes of land use efficiency. The results showed that: 1) During the study period, there were a total of 120 population shrinking cities in the study area, which accounted for 69.77% of the total number of units, and 58 economic shrinking cities that accounted for 33.72%. 2) There were a total of 37 shrinking cities identified from both economic and population perspectives, of which there was only one municipal district, and the rest were counties and county-level cities. 3) There were significant differences in land use efficiency between different types of administrative categories. The overall level of land use efficiency in shrinking cities was relatively low, mainly manifested in low and medium low efficiency levels. 4) From the perspective of GM index, the land use efficiency of shrinking cities showed a fluctuating upward trend, with an average annual growth rate of 1.89%. However, there existed a gap between the land use efficiencies of the shrinking cities and the non-shrinking ones.