A UCF economist is predicting Florida will continue to grow, despite federal shakeups.
In his latest Florida forecast, economist Sean Snaith says Florida’s economy should continue to grow despite policy shakeups in Washington, D.C. and their impact on state-level politics.
Snaith, the director of the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Economic Forecasting, released his quarterly forecast, saying he is unsure if Florida’s newly formed DOGE team will have the same dramatic impact on local budgets as DOGE is having at the federal level.
A frequent critic of the national debt, Snaith said: “State and local governments in Florida already must operate in a manner that results in balanced budgets. There’s no running up the debt like what we’ve seen at the federal level and our $36.6 trillion national debt.”
The real question, Snaith says, is how much the federal cuts and financial market uncertainty will impact the pace of Florida’s economic growth, which he predicts will decelerate from its current rate over the next few years.
Other highlights from Snaith’s four-year Florida forecast include:
- From 2025-2028, Florida’s economy, as measured by Real Gross State Product, will expand at an average annual rate of 2.2%. Real Gross State Product will decelerate during the economic slowdown as growth will slow to 2.5% in 2025, 2.2% in 2026, and then further to 1.8% in 2027 before rising to 2.1% in 2028.
- Payroll job growth in Florida will continue to decelerate as the economy remains essentially at full employment. After year-over-year growth of 5.7% in 2022, payroll employment growth in 2023 was 3.3% but slowed to 2.1% in 2024. It will drift lower to 0.3% by 2027 before rising to 0.6% in 2028, outperforming the national labor market the entire time.
- Labor force growth in Florida will average 0.5% from 2025-2028. After growing 2.8% in 2023, growth slowed to 0.7%—and with slower economic growth, labor force growth will slow as well.
- The slowing U.S. economy pushed Florida’s unemployment rate up to 3.3% in 2024, and it will drift slightly higher to 3.5% in 2025 and rise to 4.9% by 2028. All the while remaining below our forecast for the U.S. economy.
- The sectors expected to have the strongest average job growth during 2025-2028 are Education & Health Services (1.7%), Leisure & Hospitality (1.4%), Construction (0.9%), State & Local Government (0.8%), and Federal Government (0.6%).
- Housing starts have felt headwinds from higher mortgage and insurance rates. Total starts were 193,700 in 2022—before higher mortgage rates and a slowing economy started a deceleration that will slow starts to 158,936 in 2025. From this point, starts will remain steady before drifting higher to 161,059 in 2028.
- Real personal income growth will average 3.2% during 2025-2028. Following an inflation-driven contraction in 2022, growth will be 3.5% in 2028. Florida’s average growth will be 0.5 percentage points higher than the national rate over the same four-year span.
