Palm Beach County is growing, but it’s not crazy growth

West Palm Beach clocks in as our fastest-growing city.

After decades of editing stories tracking the growing ranks of Floridians (and knocking on doors as a Census worker in 2020), I was eager to dive into last week’s release of 2022 population estimates.

Why it matters: The new report documents the continuing migration to large Southern cities. No surprise: They’re coming to Texas and Florida. (Six of the 15 fastest-growing large cities are there; three are here: North Port, Cape Coral and Port St. Lucie.)

Stats to know and tell:

🤗 Florida was home to 21.8 million people in 2021. In 2022, it was more than 22.2 million. That’s an annual growth rate of 1.8 percent or 396,754 new neighbors.

🏌🏼‍♂️ Many of them settled in The Villages in central Florida. The Census reports that the baby boomer retirement destination was the fastest-growing U.S. metro area between 2021 and 2022, increasing by 7.5%.

🏠 None of the fastest-growing sizable U.S. cities is in Palm Beach County, but Port St. Lucie’s boom endures. The bedroom community just 40 minutes north of Jupiter was the seventh fastest-growing city in the country last year, with 13,887 new residents. PSL is now home to 231,790 people.

What is happening in PBC? We grew by about 1 percent or 15,254 people from 2021 to 2202.

🚚 That’s more than the 9,050 people who moved here the previous year. 

🧠 If you are asked to recite Palm Beach County’s 2022 population, you can confidently estimate it at 1.52 million.

🐟 The county’s newest city, Westlake, is the fastest growing by percentage, with a population of 4,255 in 2022, nearly double the 2,170 from the year before. Westlake is a Minto housing development expected to top out at 11,000 residents.

☀️ Among larger Palm Beach County municipalities, West Palm Beach saw the most growth, coming in at 120,932 residents, up nearly 3 percent, or 3,041 people, from the previous year.

See the Census Bureau population estimates for all 39 Palm Beach County cities here.

🥇 BONUS: Read Stet co-founder Joel Engelhardt’s deep dive into the 2020 Census Palm Beach County data that appeared in OnGardens here.