Danny McAuliffe
Hurricane Michael probably won’t change the trajectory of the Florida’s population, according to state economists.
The Florida Demographic Estimating Conference, an arm of the Legislative Office of Economic and Demographic Research, recently adopted a revised population growth projection: About 14,000 more people are expected to set up residency in the Sunshine State by April 2019 than previously thought.
The increased estimate reflects “stronger residential electric meter growth than anticipated in July,” according to the panel’s executive summary. The growth is attributed to “mostly to net migration, as the forecast for natural increase remained relatively unchanged.”
Meanwhile, Hurricane Michael, the powerful Category 4 storm that prompted an emergency disaster declaration in 16 counties, is “unlikely” to negatively affect overall population growth.
“The population of the 16 disaster-declared counties represents 3.9 percent of the state’s population, and the 6 hardest hit counties represent 1.5 percent of the state’s population,” reads the executive summary.
“There will likely be some shifting among counties and cities,” it adds, but not enough to merit a “discrete adjustment … to the forecast.”
In total, Florida is projected to add nearly 330,000 new residents by April 2019, upping the forecasted statewide population to about 21.1 million from the current
Similar yearly increases — “analogous to adding a city slightly larger than Orlando every year”— are expected through 2024.
The panel pointed to a large discrepancy between the state’s forecast and the U.S. Census projection.
The latest Florida growth estimate from the Census is about 420,800 persons higher than what the state recently adopted.
The Census continually produces projections much higher than what’s adopted by the state, and the conference said it will aim to find out why, “continuing its efforts to identify how the differing underlying methodologies contribute to the gap between the two sets of estimates.”
