University of Florida News

Florida population video

Supers:
Gainesville, FL
David Denslow/UF population researcher

For the first time since World War Two, more people are leaving Florida than moving into the state.

The University of Florida’s latest population projections show the Sunshine State lost more than fifty-thousand residents from April 2008 to April 2009. The recession’s taken a toll on the job and housing markets. Areas that enjoyed big population growth over the past decade or so and suffered most from the sub-prime mortgage mess, took the hardest hit.

Denslow: “They were just thriving on the construction industry and the economies were almost fully concentrated on growth and when it stopped, it fell of a cliff.” (:10)

Experts suspect it may take as little as one year for things to improve growth-wise, but it all depends on the economy.

Denslow: “It’s going to turn around. Florida’s not going to become another Detroit. It’s got too nice a climate and the baby boomers are retiring. Those people born between 1946 and 1964 are hitting retirement age and a lot of them are going to come to the Sunshine State.” (:14)

And once those baby boomers can sell their homes up north, experts say they’ll likely head south.

Note: Downloadable videos are encoded at 720x486 using the Photo-JPEG codec. Audio is encoded at 44.1 kHz and unmixed.