By Matt Brooks, Florida State University and Karin Brewster, Florida State University
From 2020 to 2024, Florida’s population grew by 8.5%, from 21.6 million to 23.4 million.
This is nothing new: The state’s warm weather, amenities that include world-class golf courses and beaches, and lack of income tax have long attracted newcomers, so Florida often leads the U.S. in population growth.
But recent data suggests that population growth may be slowing.
As demographers – social scientists who specialize in population change – we evaluated the current trends in the Sunshine State.
Demographics have political implications, and at the moment, Florida’s government is relying on continued growth.
In early June 2026, the state Legislature approved a ballot initiative for November aimed at reducing property taxes for homeowners. The proposed amendment to the state constitution would expand the homestead tax exemption, not including school taxes, for current Florida homeowners on their primary residence. The exemption would start at US$150,000 in 2027, then ramp up to $250,000 in 2028 and be adjusted for inflation after that.
In other words, the tax collector would deduct the exempted amount from the assessed value of a homesteaded property, and the property tax rate would then be applied to that lower number.
Supporters of the tax cut argue that reduced tax revenue would be recouped by the continued arrival of new residents. These newcomers would be buying homes at the usual property tax rates, with an exemption of only $50,000. After four years, that would increase to $250,000. It’s also possible that the proposed tax cuts might attract new residents.
If Floridians vote for this exemption in November, the state’s continued population growth would be vital to maintaining local and state government budgets.
The state Legislature also recently approved a new congressional map for 2026. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says this new map is needed to address “malapportionment” and uneven migration patterns within the state since 2020. Before redrawing the districts in April 2026, the governor more than once had said that the state was shorted a congressional representative because there was more population growth in some areas than others.
To determine whether Florida’s population is still growing, we used the Census Bureau’s components of change dataset. The Bureau provides annual estimates of population size and the factors responsible for changes: births, deaths, domestic in-migrants, domestic out-migrants, immigrants and emigrants.
From this data, we estimated the annual growth rate for Florida and its 67 counties, along with the contribution of three factors: natural increase, meaning the difference between the number of births and deaths; the net domestic migration, which is the difference between the number of people moving in from other states and moving out; and net immigration, meaning the difference between the number of immigrants and emigrants.
Our data shows that Florida’s population was still growing in 2025, but at an annual rate of just 0.9%. This pales in comparison to Florida’s peak growth rate of 2.5% in 2022 and is also much lower than the five years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Three demographic factors explain this change. First, domestic migration has slowed to a trickle. In 2025, just 22,000 more people moved to Florida from other states than moved out. For comparison, the annual average during the pandemic, from 2020 to 2022, was around 208,000. While no single shift can fully explain this slowdown, rising housing costs in the state may be a culprit. Predicted increases in both property insurance rates and severe weather may also be discouraging newcomers from moving to Florida.