Study: Florida Population Growth Slows

Population growth in Florida has slowed down, but is still moving at a rapid pace, especially in Jacksonville.

After four years of adding about 400,000 residents a year, the state's population grew by about 331,000 from April 2006 to April 2007, said Stan Smith, director of the University of Florida's Bureau of Economic and Business Research. His group released a study showing the state had 18.68 million residents on April 1, an increase of 2.7 million, or 17 percent, since April 2000.

Jacksonville's population grew 15.9 percent to 852,450 in the same period.

"With the meltdown in the housing market nationally, one of the impacts has been a slowdown of migration to Florida," Smith said. "It's certainly harder to get a new mortgage now than it was a year or two ago -- and add to that the difficulty of selling your previous house."

Over the past year, only Monroe County had negative population growth, but most counties had a slowdown, Smith said. The state's population growth will stay at about 300,000 a year for the next three years, which is below the previous projections, he said. Smaller, less urban counties will experience a higher percentage of growth than the large urban counties, he added.

The counties that added the most residents between April 2000 and April 2007 were:

1. Orange County, which added 209,259 to total 1.1 million
2. Miami-Dade County, which added 208,513 to total 2.46 million
3. Hillsborough County, which added 193,913 to total 1.19 million
4. Lee County, which added 174,853 to total 615,741
5. Palm Beach County, which added 163,842 to total 1.3 million
6. Broward County, which added 142,689 to total 1.77 million
7. Duval County, which added 118,718 to total 897,597

The cities that added the most residents between April 2000 and April 2007 were:

1. Jacksonville, which added 116,833 to total 852,450
2. Port St. Lucie, which added 66,546 to total 155,315
3. Cape Coral, which added 62,237 to total 164,523
4. Orlando, which added 42,814 to total 228,765
5. Miramar, which added 38,966 to total 111,705
6. Palm Coast, which added 37,644 to total 70,376
7. Miami, which added 32,964 to total 395,434
8. Tampa, which added 32,817 to total 336,264
9. North Port, which added 30,935 to total 53,732
10. Fort Lauderdale, which added 27,574 to total 179,971

Source: University of Florida