For the third consecutive year, Franklin Street CEO Andrew Wright delivered an insightful presentation on what’s in store for the year ahead at Tampa Bay Business Journals’ Economic Outlook Event. Below is an excerpt from Andrew’s virtual presentation:
I talked a lot last year about a secular bull market. Over a 20- or 30-year time frame, things will go up and they go down; they go up and they go down, and no one has any crystal ball.
But if you look at long-term trends, I said it last year and I say it again today. There’s no better place in the world that I’d rather be than the Interstate 4 corridor. It really is all about population growth.
When you think about the number of people who have been coming and all the things that have happened in 2020 and all the anecdotal stats of people moving here, whether it be businesses or friends of mine that are talking about coming here, welcome to the Sunshine State.
A little more than 1,060 people move to the state a day. That’s a staggering number. 387,000 people moved here between April and April, ending in 2020. I don’t have great statistics on that beyond that. But it’s a pretty strong number.
When you look at how we compare to the national average, in Florida we’re almost triple the national average in population growth and almost 20 percent higher than population growth in Florida here in the Tampa Bay MSA. So that’s strong by any measure.
But it’s not just about the growth rate. When you look at our comparison, you look at the other states, you see growth since 2010. You see growth since 2018; so a two-year population trend.
And of the top 10, you see Florida chimes in there at five. But of particular note is the size of the population compared to those people in front of us.
It’s one thing for Idaho to grow by 4 percent on 1.8 million, but it’s an entirely different thing for Florida to be growing at over 3.2 percent on a population of almost 22 million.
If you look at it now based on population, to understand people who are of our comparable size, aside from Texas, there’s really nobody close.
Read more from the Tampa Bay Business Journal or click here to watch a playback of the presentation.
