Florida still has some of the fastest-growing counties in the U.S., but the pace of expansion has cooled, according to Census Bureau estimates released Thursday.
The latest figures place Ocala at the top of the list for percentage growth among metro areas with 20,000 or more residents between July 1, 2024, and July 1, 2025. The region’s 3.4 percent growth --- from 427,995 residents to 442,660 --- was ahead of Myrtle Beach, S.C. at 3.2 percent growth and Spartanburg, S.C. at 2.8 percent.
The Lakeland-Winter Haven area was fourth at 2.7 percent and Punta Gorda was fifth at 2.7 percent.
At the other end was Taylor County, part of the rural Big Bend which suffered three direct hurricane landfalls over a 13-month period in 2023 and 2024. Taylor County is estimated to have lost 2.2 percent of its population over the past year; its population stood at 21,799 in the April 1, 2020 Census.
Monroe County, with a population of 82,871 in the 2020 Census, lost an estimated 2 percent of its population over the past year, the fourth largest decline in the nation.
Vernon Parish, Louisiana and Del Norte County, California were second and third in terms of percent decline.
The Census figures also showed Pinellas County losing 11,834 residents, the second largest numerical decline in the nation. Miami-Dade County, now the most populous county in Florida with 2.8 million residents, had the third largest numeric decline, dropping 10,115 residents.
Los Angeles had the largest numeric decline, losing an estimated 54,934 of its 9.7 million residents.
The Census noted that population growth slowed in a majority of the nation’s 3,143 counties. Of the 2,066 counties that grew between 2023 and 2024, nearly 8 in 10 slowed or reversed course in the past year.
Other counties in the top 10 for numeric declines included Queen County, NY, Orange County, California, San Diego County, California, Kings County, NY, and Dallas County, Texas,
“The nation’s largest counties like those in the New York metro area are often international migration hubs, gaining large numbers of international migrants and losing people that move to other parts of the country via domestic migration,” George Hayward, a Census Bureau demographer, explained in a release. “With fewer gains from international migration, these types of counties saw their population growth diminish or even turn into loss.”