The Orlando Economic Partnership (Website) has released its forecast for Orlando’s next 21 11 years and the weather looks, well, crowded.
In their latest report, 2030: Insight into Orlando’s Future, the Orlando Economic Partnership (OEP) has identified at least eight different ways in which the region will be impacted and changed in the near future.
- Population Growth: Orlando is expected to attract roughly 1,500 people a week over the next 11 years and reach a projected population of 5.2 million people. Greater Orlando currently has an estimated population of just over 2 million people.
- Employment Growth: Orlando’s employment numbers are expected to grow by 19 percent; that’s 10 percentage points higher than the national average.
- Industry Growth: The largest increase in employment is expected to be in home and healthcare services – we’re looking at you Lake Nona and Ivanhoe Village. Manufacturing jobs are expected to increase by six percent.
- Migration and Ethnic Diversity: International migration is overtaking the natural increase of American births in this country and that is already reflected in Orlando’s cultural makeup where one in every nine Orlandoans moved here in the past 9 years and half of those migrants came from another country.
- Demographic Shifts: One in every five Americans in 2030 will be over the age of 65, and seniors will outnumber children in the nation by 2035 but Orlando will hit it much sooner. Thanks, Golden Girls.
- Education: There are 610,000 children enrolled in Orlando’s seven different school districts with an additional 135,000 students expected to be enrolled in school by 2030. Faced with that growth in students and a large glut in retiring teachers, our region will face a demand of more than 30,000 new teachers in the next 11 years.
- Affordable Housing: Orlando has a poverty rate of roughly 16 percent, which translates to more than 650,000+ people living in poverty. According to the OEP’s report, that number could fill the Camping World Stadium 10 times over. The average renter needs to work 51 hours a week to avoid becoming cost-burdened by housing costs; that means spending more than 30 percent of their income.
- Mobility: Orlando is currently ranked as the 26 Worst City for Traffic out of 297 American cities, according to a recent Global Traffic Scorecard. But, the OEP sees that a combined $10 billion in transportation investments could be paving the way for our more crowded future including, a completed I-4 Ultimate, an expanded SunRail with extensions to OIA and Deland, Virgin Trains USA connectors to Tampa and Miami, and the South Terminal at MCO which will have been completed 10 years previously.
Read the report for yourself below: