An unexpected outgrowth of the worst recession in 70 years: Sarasota has quietly become more cosmopolitan.
While hard times discouraged Midwesterners and New Englanders from moving here, more Peruvians, Italians, Brazilians, Ukranians and many others made the Gulf Coast home.
Along with the oft-pronounced, desperately wished for death of the suburbs, no demographic narrative thrills the mainstream news media more than the decline of the Sun Belt, the country’s southern rim extending from the Carolinas to California. Since the housing bubble collapse in 2007, commentators have heralded “the end of the Sun Belt boom.”
The recession may be officially over, but its impact continues to reverberate as the nation experiences its most sluggish population growth since the 1940s.
South Florida, which 40 years ago gave birth to senior citizen icons such as the early bird special and condo commando, is a retirement mecca no more, according to new Census statistics released Wednesday.
Broward County lost 4 percent of its 65-plus population between 2000 and 2010, the Census reported, while Palm Beach County gained a modest 9 percent.
The Great Recession of 2008 is officially over, according to a panel of economists from the National Bureau of Economic Research, a widely accepted arbiter of business cycles. In fact, the recession reached its "trough" (end of the decline and the subsequent beginning of the rise) in June 2009.
History and economic patterns remind us that immediately following a trough, declining periods are categorized as expansion periods in which markets level, stabilize, prepare for growth, and no doubt, create opportunity.
Florida, once the nation's oldest state, is losing some of its gray.
Thanks to a lull in retiree migration and an increase in working-age adults, Florida has dropped three places to become the fifth-oldest state in the nation, according to census data released Thursday.
Emptiness is what people see today when they drive through the monogrammed iron gates of Lake Drawdy Reserve in east Orange County. There are paved cul-de-sacs, lakefront lots and fancy frosted-glass streetlights. But nobody lives there.
Thirty years from now, they will likely see 28 upscale homes occupied by young families, residents from abroad, refugees from coastal counties, in-migrants from other states and well-to-do retirees.
More than 1 million people are projected to be living in Lee County within 25 years, according to a study released Monday by the University of Florida.
That revelation comes even though the statistics show that the state’s population growth has slowed to its lowest level in more than 60 years.
Still, said Stan Smith, director of the university’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research, “there still will be pretty substantial growth.”
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Florida was again one of the country’s leaders in population growth in the last decade, but the growth rates over the past few years have been among the lowest in the state’s history, according to a new study by the University of Florida.
