Florida’s economy, one of the nation’s fastest growing since the pandemic, is expected to shift into a slower gear as the state returns to what analysts describe as “pre-pandemic growth rates.”
A Florida TaxWatch report released Thursday projects real gross domestic product growth will decline from 2.4 percent in 2025 to 1.2 percent by 2030. The state will keep expanding, but at a far more moderate pace than the surge seen between 2021 and 2024, when strong population inflows, a hot real estate market, and record tourism drove outsized gains in output.
The labor market reflects the same trend. Florida is forecast to add about 216,000 jobs in 2025, but annual job creation is expected to slow to roughly 146,000 by 2027 before recovering modestly to 208,000 in 2030. The unemployment rate, now at 4.1 percent, is projected to climb to 4.5 percent as higher Federal Reserve interest rates weigh on hiring, then ease back to 4.1 percent by the end of the decade.
The report notes that the forecast signals a normalization rather than a downturn, following three years of strong growth, pointing to the state’s transition away from a high-inflation, high-interest-rate environment toward more sustainable conditions. The state’s Revenue Estimating Conference has offered a similar assessment, expecting consumers and businesses to adjust spending and investment as borrowing costs stabilize.
Personal incomes are projected to rise at a healthy pace, increasing from 3.9 percent growth in 2025 to a peak of 6.4 percent in 2027 before easing closer to 5.6 percent by 2030. Still, the report cautions that inflation will limit how far those income gains stretch. The gap between nominal and real GDP is expected to persist through the decade, reflecting ongoing price pressures.
Tourism, a cornerstone of Florida’s economy, underscores the reversion. After record visitor numbers in 2023 and early 2025, overall growth in arrivals is forecast to fall by 1.2 percent this year before rebounding briefly and tapering off again in the early 2030s. Analysts said the pattern represents less a sign of weakness than a “long-term reversion” to more typical visitation trends that existed before the pandemic disrupted global travel.
Florida’s growth trajectory is now set to more closely mirror the national economy. U.S. real GDP is expected to grow by 1.4 percent in 2025 and peak at 2.3 percent in 2027. Florida will begin the period with faster growth, but by the end of the decade the two are projected to converge. State income growth is expected to outpace the national average after 2026, even as Florida’s unemployment rate remains slightly above the U.S. level in the near term.
