Florida’s economy has grown rapidly in recent years. The Florida Chamber says the state now has the world’s 14th-largest economy and is the second-fastest growing state in the country.
But that growth has also driven up housing and other costs, changing where people are choosing to live.
Florida has spent years attracting new residents and businesses.
Mark Wilson, president and CEO of the Florida Chamber, says the state’s economy has reached a scale few states, or even countries, can match.
“We have about a 1.8 trillion-dollar economy in Florida. That's bigger than Saudi Arabia. We just passed Mexico, so that's a pretty good thing for people in Florida to see as a comparison,” he said. “It happened by design. We're making the right decisions, and we're attracting a lot of wealth to Florida. We're attracting a lot of companies.
Florida’s growth is part of a broader population shift toward the American South that accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. The South has been the nation’s fastest-growing region over the past five years and the only one to see growth across every age group.
Wilson says that has intensified competition among Southern states to attract businesses, workers and families.
“We're competing with Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee. So as capital and businesses and families leave these high-cost, high-regulation states and come to states like Florida. We have to make sure that Florida has the best quality of life, the best healthcare, sort of that best mix of why you would want to live here, but and why you would want to learn here, and why you would want to have your business here,” he said.
But the latest population trends suggest a part of Florida's explosion, its population growth, is slowing.
About 600,000 people moved to Florida in 2022. By last year, that number had fallen to about 200,000, according to an analysis of U.S. Census estimates by the University of Florida’s Shimberg Center for Housing Studies.
Anne Ray, a researcher at the Shimberg Center, says some of the state’s highest-cost counties, including Miami-Dade, are now losing residents through domestic migration.
“The highest cost counties are starting to lose population migration. In other places, it's simply slower. In our fastest growing counties, so places like Pasco County and a lot of parts of the Panhandle. Actually, we're continuing to see population growth and immigration,” she said.
Ray says rising housing costs are making it harder for many middle- and lower-income workers to remain in those areas.
Instead, many of Florida’s fastest-growing counties are places where housing remains relatively affordable while still offering commuting access to larger metro areas with broader job markets. Those counties have also seen some of the state’s highest levels of new home construction.
“It's a bit of a chicken and egg question, right? Are people moving to these places because there's more housing being built, or is there more housing being built because more people are moving there? But we definitely see a lot of growth in the counties in Florida where housing costs are more modest,” she said.
Younger Floridians have been particularly affected by rising housing costs. In 2023, more people between the ages of 20 and 29 left Florida than moved into the state, even as Florida’s overall population continued to increase.
Wilson says the Florida Chamber recognizes those challenges. He says expanding housing options and strengthening partnerships with Florida’s universities will be important to developing the state’s future workforce.
“We have over 500,000 open jobs in Florida right now. Many of them are high-paying, high-skill jobs in Florida. We need to make sure we're training younger talent for the types of jobs that Florida is going to have in the future,” he said.
