Florida Growth Not So Slow After All

Florida Growth Not So Slow After All
Dec 24, 2010 – 8:19 AM

Laura Parker

AOL News, Laura Parker Contributor

A year ago, the news in Florida couldn't have been more dire. On top of the housing bust and an unemployment rate topping 12 percent came the news that Florida's great economic engine -- growth -- had ground to a halt. For the first time since the end of World War II, Florida lost population -- some 50,000 people, estimates showed.

"We've got rooftops to spare. We just don't have the bodies to put in them," said Sean Snaith, an economist at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, at the time.

It turns out that Florida's future may not be so bleak. It remained one of the fastest-growing states in the past decade, in spite of the recession, new census data show. The Sunshine State added 2.8 million people, enough to win two new seats in Congress and assure that Florida remains on track to overtake New York as the third most populous state in the 2020 census.

"To me, that's saying the long-term trends have not really changed all that much," said Stan Smith, director of the University of Florida's Bureau of Economic and Business Research in Gainesville. "Even though there have been substantial ups and downs, people have often over-interpreted what's been happening in the last year or two and view deviations as the beginning of a new trend. I don't think you can conclude that."

Smith and other Florida demographers await the population counts for city and counties that the U.S. Census Bureau will begin releasing in February, to determine whether his premise is true. But the new state-by-state numbers help put the larger picture in perspective.

Even with the recession, the state's growth rate can only be described as robust. Florida grew at a rate of 17.6 percent in the past decade, compared with the national average of 9.7 percent. As with the rest of the country, most of the growth occurred in the first half of the decade.



It was Smith's bureau that came up with the estimated population loss last year.

Now that the new state census has been released, he said the loss may have been merely a smaller increase in population. He said his population estimates for the mid-decade may have been "on the high side," influenced by the building boom.

"Consequently, when the housing bust hit, it made it look as if the population declined for that one year in 2009," he said.

Smith said he expects slow growth next year, then a gradual return to what he calls "more normal levels" of growth.

"Ohio and New York and New Jersey are still going to be cold in the winter," Smith said.

Smith warns that Florida may not grow at its previous pace. "But it will get to 2 million or 2.5 per decade, which is still a big number," he said.

Until the housing bust brought Florida's economy crashing down, the state had grown explosively for three decades. In the 1970s, '80s and '90s, Florida added between 3 million and 3.2 million residents every 10 years, Smith said.

"We called it 'Economic Development for Dummies,'" said Snaith. "Sit back, if people come, your economy grows."

In the first few years of the 2000s, houses were being built so fast that they made Florida's legendary swamp lot developers of yesteryear look downright somnolent by comparison. In Fort Myers, a city of 60,531 residents in southwest Florida, 14,000 new homes were built on speculation.

When it all ended in 2008, Fort Myers became the state's ground zero in the home foreclosure crisis. Some 12 percent of homeowners found themselves in foreclosure, one of the highest rates in the country -- and high enough to draw a visit from President Barack Obama in February 2009 as he campaigned for passage of his stimulus plan.

Across the state on the Atlantic coast, Flagler County went from being the fastest-growing county to having an unemployment rate of 16 percent, Snaith said.

The August 2009 announcement that the state had likely lost population seemed inconceivable.

"People were stunned," said Aubrey Jewett, a political scientist at the University of Central Florida. "We had a variation on the saying, nothing is certain except for death, taxes and population growth in Florida. Then we discovered only two of the three were sure things."

Some economists, like Snaith, are less confident that Florida will resume growth at its old pace. The decline of housing values nationally makes it difficult, if not impossible, for some who once considered a move to Florida to afford it.

"We're not Michigan by any stretch of the imagination," Snaith said. "The near term is going to be a slow climb out of a pretty deep hole. People will again move back to Florida. But I don't think we'll see a 3 percent growth rate."

To be sure, Florida is still mired in recession. The statewide unemployment rate hovers stubbornly around 12 percent. Christmas shopping looked good, but even Santa Claus had trouble finding a job at the mall this season.

Still, there are some promising signs. Enrollment in public schools is expected to increase for the third year in a row. State officials anticipate next fall's enrollment to be the largest in six years. Likewise, electric hookups, another measuring stick, are on the rise statewide.

In Fort Myers, if the economy isn't exactly hot, it's certainly less grim.

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