Census shows huge growth for Central Florida over past 10 years
Long-awaited results from the 2020 Census released Thursday showed that Central Florida had some of the biggest growth in the state, and the nation, over the past 10 years.
Osceola County saw the biggest growth by a single county in Florida, with its population increasing by about 45%, going from about 269,000 people in 2010 to about 389,000 in 2020. St. Johns County, where St. Augustine is located, saw the second-largest growth with about 44%.
Lake County was just behind that, growing by more than 29% from 297,000 to 384,000.
A Census Bureau representative said The Villages, the retirement megalopolis that stretches across Lake, Marion and Sumter counties, was the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the United States from 2010-2020. Its population increased 39% from about 93,000 to about 130,000.
Orange County came in sixth in the state in growth, increasing by almost 25% from 2010 to 2020. Its population grew from about 1.15 million to 1.43 million, despite having slowed down over the past two years going into the pandemic, according to Census estimates.
Seminole County grew by more than 11% from about 423,000 to about 471,000.
Central Florida’s sheer numbers also mean that Orange could soon start to overtake one of the major South Florida counties in terms of population.
Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach kept growing, but they only increased by about 10%. Palm Beach has about 1.5 million people, just ahead of Orange.
South Florida lags the rest of the state, which grew 14.6% to 21.5 million during the 10 years.
Those three counties are still the three largest, but that isn’t going to last, and may even have changed since people were counted on April 1, 2020.
“Orange and Osceola County are number one in number two in the state for fastest growth as a share of the state,” said Democratic consultant Steve Schale, referring to growth combined with the size of the population. “Orange County grew from 6.1% of the state to 6.64% of the state. That’s the biggest change anywhere in the state. Osceola was second.”
That means Florida’s one new congressional seat “is almost certainly going to Central Florida because almost all of the growth in Florida is in the I-4 Corridor. Everything else kind of grew at about the normal rate.”
Orange is also coming up close behind Hillsborough County, which had 1.46 million residents after growing by almost 19%.
Liberty County in the Panhandle, is the state’s smallest, with a total population of 7,974. It decreased by 4.7%, joining 17 other mostly rural counties in losing population.
Broward was the most densely populated of the Florida counties with more than 1 million residents, at 1,616.6 people per square mile.
Orange County came in second at 1,585.2 people per square mile; Hillsborough, 1,428.5 people per square mile, Miami-Dade, 1,422.1; and Palm Beach County, 759.7.