Florida, which added an average of 370,000 people annually — or over 1,000 people per day — between 2020 and 2025, has some of the nation’s fastest-growing and largest-gaining metropolitan areas. While that growth creates jobs, lifts home values and generates revenue for state and local governments, it also strains resources and demands informed planning.
Trustworthy, current data is essential not only for planners and policymakers, but also for businesses and industries. Since 1929, the source they often turn to is the Bureau of Economic and Business Research (BEBR) at the University of Florida. BEBR is among the oldest centers at UF. It has four programs dedicated to collecting and analyzing economic, demographic and survey data about Florida. BEBR’s mission is to provide these resources to state and local government, Florida businesses and the people of the state.
The Ocala metropolitan statistical area saw the fastest population growth rate of any metro in the United States last year. Companies that specialize in moving people — U-Haul and Pods, for example — put it near the top for growth in recent years. The area had the second-highest increase in home sales in Florida for the first half of 2024.
Keeping up with those demographic changes can be challenging, to say the least.
Heather Shubirg, chief growth officer at the Ocala Metro Chamber & Economic Partnership (CEP), said data from BEBR is an essential part of the marketing materials she produces.
“It’s more accurate than some of the other resources that are out there. Especially the population data is dear to my heart,” Shubirg said. “Having that granular data that is a lot more current than other external resources can get you is fabulous,” she said.
“I’ll often have people reach out for various kinds of data. It’s much easier to pull, and it’s a Florida-based resource. It’s more reliable,” said Bryce Morrison, director of business development at the Ocala Metro CEP.
It is a reputation that BEBR Director Christopher McCarty safeguards with pride.
“We’re viewed as an entity that has expertise to do these things in an honest, impartial way. We’ve been very successful at doing that, and I think we’re trusted in Tallahassee,” McCarty said.
BEBR has been doing population estimates and projects for the state since 1976. By Florida statute, these are the official numbers for the state.
“It’s more trustworthy to have a university entity do this. That takes the politics out of it. Then the state or cities can make decisions based on the data,” McCarty said.
“You’ve got to imagine that in the almost 100-year history of BEBR, most of that time there was no internet. Everything that anybody would get came out of a book. We do have a long relationship with the state, where they would collect the data that most states collect, but we would be the entity that would really put it together in a way that people could get to it. And so that’s what we were,” McCarty said.
BEBR broadens its mission
Today, BEBR is much more. In addition to gathering datasets from utilities, counties and municipalities, state agencies and even the U.S. Postal Service, BEBR generates its own data using a phone bank that is one of the largest employers on campus of students who work part-time for UF. They conduct polling on various topics, such as the widely cited monthly Consumer Sentiment Index survey for Florida.
The CSI survey gauges Floridians’ attitudes toward purchasing decisions and economic outlook at the state and national level, across segments such as gender, age and income, for current conditions and expectations over the next five years.
Along with numbers and graphs, it includes context from Hector Sandoval, director of the Economic Analysis Program at BEBR.
“Florida’s Consumer Sentiment Index is one of a kind — virtually no other state has a long and continuous history of tracking consumer confidence at the state level,” Sandoval said. “Since 1985, it has captured the mood of Floridians through economic booms, recessions and periods of uncertainty, offering a rare and valuable window into how households perceive the economy over time.”
BEBR provides a range of services on a contract basis for the state and other entities. Currently, BEBR has a contract with the state to evaluate attitudes on early learning centers that teach pre-kindergarten students.
“With early learning centers, there are all kinds of entities that want to provide that service because the state subsidizes them. But if there’s an entity that’s not doing a good job, the state wants to know that,” McCarty explained. “We would not be the ones to say this or that early learning center needs to be shut down. That would be up to the people in state government. But the state needs someone to gather and process the data in a form they can use in order to make good decisions about that.”
“It’s not really our role to start picking and choosing the success stories because that might actually call into question our neutrality,” he said.
BEBR dipped its toe into the pool of polling for statewide political races more than a decade ago.
“We learned a lot. The main thing that we learned is that it didn’t really fit with who we are. Getting involved in those things didn’t fit with the kind of neutral, impartial identity we had,” McCarty said.
“Typically, political polling is perceived as biased towards one party or the other. There’s a lot of money in political polling, but you’re going to work for one side or the other. There is very little money in neutral political polling,” he said. “Given all the other work that we do where we try to remain impartial, it just didn’t seem to fit well.”
“A lot of what we do, you might perceive as boring — but boring can still be essential. I think that there are a lot of people in Tallahassee who would vouch for the fact that BEBR does solid work, yeoman’s work. We’re trusted, whether the party sitting in power is a Republican or Democrat. I don’t think we’ve ever been really questioned on our views and ethics; we’re just trusted,” McCarty said.
“I like to think of us as a good example of a place where expertise from the university comes together with the needs of the state,” he said.
Most of the data, maps and reports generated by BEBR — going back for decades — are publicly available, much of it on BEBR’s own website.
Topics include studies of the economic impacts of Florida’s retirees on government budgets, investments in pedestrian safety, implications of referenda on various tax initiatives at the state and county levels, transportation and workforce analysis.
BEBR also provides practical training to students and professionals. Students are hired and then mentored by BEBR faculty and staff while working on grant-funded research. They design and conduct research projects, analyze data and write reports that may appear in academic journals or as presentations at conferences.
BEBR’s Survey Research Center is one of the nation’s largest university-based survey programs. Along with contracts from the state and various counties, it works with industry clients and other states.
“We’re doing a lot of work for the state of Texas related to Medicaid,” McCarty said.
Naveen Siddiqui began working at BEBR as a research intern in her junior year. She’s currently working with McCarty on a project involving the Spanish Heritage Language Program in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies, along with the Department of Linguistics, both in CLAS. Her role is to study the social networks of students in the program, including their social media connections. She and McCarty are developing other research tools, such as a survey.
“BEBR has introduced me to so many new concepts and processes. I’m having a really great time with this and learning so much,” Siddiqui said. She is on track to graduate at the end of this academic year, majoring in mathematics, statistics and economics, with a minor in Chinese. She’s now interviewing for positions at the Federal Reserve after graduation.
Demographics, consumer sentiment drive local plans
Richard Doty, GIS coordinator and research demographer at BEBR, was just completing the 2025 population estimates for the state’s 67 counties as well as all 411 cities, towns and villages in September before turning to extending projections out to 2055. He said that typically age groups stack up like a pyramid, with younger people forming the base and the elderly at the peak. In Florida, increasingly, that looks more like a column, as young people produce fewer babies while more retirees migrate in from other states.
“The median age in Sumter County in 1970 was 30. It’s now 68. That’s more dramatic than the state as a whole, but the state is aging rapidly. That’s an important insight for the Legislature and the Governor’s Office to have,” Doty said.
Julie Harrington, director of the Center for Economic Forecasting and Analysis at Florida State University, maintains a small library of books of statistical abstracts published by BEBR in years past that contain a wide range of economic data that is now published online rather than in print.
“This was our bible,” Harrington said, holding up one of those books, blossoming with Post-It Notes marking various pages and tables. “This is absolutely what we would turn to for reliable economic research.”
Much of Southwest Florida is still recovering from devastating blows by Hurricane Ian in 2022, followed by two more in 2024, Milton and Helene. As the population rebounds, it is changing demographically. The migration of people arriving from other states, rather than local births and deaths, is the primary driver.
The Regional Economic Research Institute (RERI) at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers assists local planners, developers and businesses on what to expect. Their insights are shaped by BEBR’s data.
“I don’t engage with the folks at BEBR directly — I don’t think I’ve ever met Hector Sandoval in person — but their data is something that we do use quite a bit,” said John Shannon, research economist at RERI. “We update our dashboard every month with the consumer sentiment index they produce. Of course, we cite them as the source on our website.”
“We also use their population projections. That gives us insight into the future growth in our economy, both at the state level and the local level,” Shannon said. “There are other sources for this information at the national level, but they are the best source for state and local data.”
“You can hear a lot of talk about what’s going on at the national level, which is great, but that doesn’t really speak to how consumers here are feeling. BEBR helps us fill in that gap. It’s helpful to get some sort of window into where things are headed. After all, consumers represent two-thirds of the economy,” he said.
As a researcher, Shannon also said he appreciates the transparency BEBR provides in its methods and data sources. “I think that assures us of its reliability — that they know what they’re doing, and doing what they’re saying,” he said.
Jennifer Conoley, president and chief executive officer of Florida’s Great Northwest, the regional economic development organization for Northwest Florida Panhandle, utilizes BEBR data to recruit businesses — from chemical manufacturers to cybersecurity — to 13 counties across the Panhandle.
“I travel the world talking about our region with C-suite executives and site selection consultants. They may be very aware of Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa and Orlando, but our population looks a lot different. The data points BEBR provides help us tell our story. It gives us a competitive edge,” she said.
Rebuilding the future: Jacksonville’s Economic Rise
Coming out of the Great Recession, Jacksonville — like many cities across Florida — was in a funk. “Duval County residents will need to ask the hard questions before they tackle the various economic and social challenges,” Lynne Holt, Ph.D.,then a BEBR research analyst, wrote in a 2011 study titled “Jacksonville: Choosing a Future.”
“And these challenges will likely overlap those facing the state as a whole. Yet, while the economies of, and the economic tools available to, the state and Duval County are interlinked, the emphasis given to various policy priorities is very much a local decision,”wrote Holt, who retired as a policy analyst at the Bob Graham Center for Public Service in 2018.
The report went on to provide data on home foreclosures and other distressing markers. Florida, at the time, had 13.2% of home mortgages in foreclosure, compared with 4.1% nationally. The analysis also noted strengths for Jacksonville: headquarters for three Fortune 500 companies, a young workforce, four military installations, a large intermodal shipping port and strong healthcare networks.
Ramon Day (MBA, UF Warrington College of Business, ’81) is working to resurrect the Jacksonville Community Council, a non-partisan civic group focused on promoting community engagement that become inactive in 2016. Day said Jacksonville historically has had challenges in getting various stakeholders to align their priorities and approaches for economic development. That appears to be changing.
Holt emphasized the need for Jacksonville, and the rest of Florida, to become less dependent on real estate and construction, and place higher emphasis on better paying jobs.
Holt advised city leaders to take advantage of its deepwater port. “One approach to expediting the recovery from the Great Recession would appear to be through expanded export activity, in large part because of the escalating demand for American‐produced goods in emerging markets,”the report noted.
Holt also suggested the city align itself with Florida’s best prospects. “Florida and Jacksonville overlap in particular in their focus on advanced manufacturing, aviation and aerospace, information technology, and life sciences.”
Those words turned out to be prophetic.
UF is building a new $300 million graduate campus in downtown Jacksonville, with programs set to launch in fall 2026. It will host the Florida Semiconductor Institute and focus on fields like engineering, business and computer science. UF Health also has grown its Health Science Center there.
The Jacksonville City Council recently reached an agreement with the Jacksonville Aviation Authority to jointly focus on bringing more job-creating development to Cecil Airport on the city’s west side, envisioned as a national aerospace hub, to include a testing facility for Hermeus — billed as the world’s fastest reusable aircraft — and passenger plane manufacturing plant.
The Jacksonville Port Authority, also known as JAXPORT, is Florida’s largest container port and one of the nation’s top ports for automobiles. From 2011 to 2023, it has seen revenues and container volume grow at an annual rate above 2%. Meanwhile, container volume nationally during that time frame fell 18%.
Day, an eighth generation Floridian who has grew up in Jacksonville from the age of two, said Jacksonville is enjoying a prosperous run — focusing on the just the sort of sectors that Holt recommended in the BEBR report.
“Now Jacksonville is a growth market. Historically, Jacksonville was growing at a rather stagnant 1% a year. I recently saw a report that between 2019 and 2025, we grew at an annual rate of over 2%. Unless Jacksonville gets its house in order, we are we are not going to be able to support the population that wants to be here,” Day said, noting it’s a good problem to have.
Holt said data from BEBR is helping to define where infrastructure is needed. “It’s the most accurate economic and business information available in Florida, the Southeast and even nationwide,” he said.