{"id":136911,"date":"2026-01-29T23:15:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T23:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/136911\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T23:15:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T23:15:09","slug":"florida-chamber-economic-summit-projects-optimism-for-this-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/136911\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Chamber economic summit projects optimism for this year"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chamber officials forsee an increased population and workforce while affordable housing remains a sticking point. <\/p>\n

The Florida Chamber Foundation\u2019s<\/a> forecast for economic growth this year is pretty upbeat.<\/p>\n

The business advocacy group held its annual 2026 Economic Outlook and Jobs Solutions Summit<\/a> online Thursday and projections were pretty bullish as about 20 speakers from economists to business leaders laid out their expectations.<\/p>\n

The Chamber Foundation President and CEO Mark Wilson said there\u2019s reason the state\u2019s business picture is looking up. He said Florida is now the 15th largest economy in the world. But he wants to see that significantly increase in the next five years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to get to No. 10 by 2030,\u201d Wilson said as the Chamber is in the middle of its 10-year strategic 2030 Blueprint plan.<\/p>\n

Wilson said the Chamber is anticipating an increase of 2.5 million people in the state\u2019s population by the end of the decade. That would be on top of the current estimated population of 23 million. If that population jump is realized, he said the state would need 1.3 million new jobs in the private sector.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sheridan Morby, Senior Research Economist for the Chamber Foundation, said the 2025 nonagricultural labor market had more than 10 million jobs in the state, which she called a \u201cbig deal.\u201d The market is expected to grow by 1% to 2% this year.<\/p>\n

Morby said there\u2019s no reason to expect a recession this year while noting umemployment ticked up to 4.2% to close out 2025 and that the trend could continue. She said Florida\u2019s jobless rate is still lower than the national rate of 4.3%.<\/p>\n

With all that optimism, there is one sticking point: affordable housing.<\/p>\n

Brad O\u2019Connor, Chief Economist for the Florida Realtors trade association, said 2025 saw the fourth consecutive year-over-year decreased in home sales. But decreasing mortgage rates, which were hovering around 7% about a year ago, fell to about 6% thanks to interest rate reductions by the Federal Reserve. If the market shifts further in favor of buyers, O\u2019Connor expects an uptick in sales will follow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chamber officials forsee an increased population and workforce while affordable housing remains a sticking point. The Florida Chamber…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136912,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[66924,66925,66926,28,3326,30,29,66927,1644,3329,66928,53203,66929,66930,964],"class_list":["post-136911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-2026-economic-outlook-and-jobs-solutions-summit","tag-blue-print","tag-brad-oconnor","tag-florida","tag-florida-chamber-foundation","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-florida-realtors-trade-association","tag-housing","tag-mark-wilson","tag-new-jobs","tag-recession","tag-sheridan-morby","tag-strategic-plan","tag-workforce"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}