A quarter of Floridians surveyed are “seriously considering” moving elsewhere because of the high cost of living in the state.
And when those who are thinking about it somewhat are added, half are contemplating leaving because of the cost of living.
The findings are from a survey released Monday by the Business and Economic Polling Initiative at Florida Atlantic University.
“The moving consideration rate is striking as it suggests that while Florida attracts new residents, many current ones feel squeezed enough to think about leaving,” Eric Levy, assistant director of the polling initiative, said in a written statement.
To be sure, plenty of people aren’t thinking about packing up for what they hope might be greener financial pastures outside Florida.
The poll found 24.7% said “not at all” and 25.7% said “not really,” when asked if “the cost of living in Florida made you consider moving to a different state?”
But 26% said they were “seriously considering” moving because of the high cost of living and 23.6% said they were somewhat considering leaving.
The researchers concluded that the cost of living is “the state’s pressure point.” The poll found that eight in 10 Floridians are concerned about housing affordability and half are “very concerned.”
And most Floridians don’t have a bright view of the U.S. economy. Just 12% said it was excellent and 29% said good, compared to 32% who said it was fair and 28% who labeled it poor.
“An affordability anxiety shadows Florida’s boom economy. Can residents afford to live here and provide for themselves?” Levy said.
The survey’s findings about cost of living and the idea that people are considering leaving correlates with anecdotal reports.
“We are absolutely … in an affordability crisis,” state Rep. Christine Hunschofsky, D-Parkland, said last month at a joint workshop between the Broward Legislative Delegation and the Broward County Commission.
County Commissioner Robert McKinzie was even more direct at the same gathering: “This town, it’s not affordable anymore for the regular person.”
Desiree Grant, a broker associate at Fidelity Real Estate in Broward, said the cost of living as a possible reason for moving is more pronounced among people who have traditional paid jobs (sometimes called W-2 workers) than entrepreneurs.
Given the incomes from many jobs in the region, she said those are the people who are most stressed.
But, she added, it’s “more of a thought and not a lot of people are acting on it.” Putting the notion of leaving the state into practice is a lot more complicated than actually doing it, she said. “It’s hard for people to do unless they find a specific opportunity,” Grant said.
While people continue to move into the state, there has been a shift, Atlas Van Lines reported a year ago.
“After spending many years as a top relocation destination, a notable shift has occurred, with many people packing their bags and moving out of the state,” the moving company said. “For many, the dream of homeownership in Florida is becoming increasingly unattainable, leading them to explore more affordable housing markets in other states.”
Younger Floridians
Younger Floridians are more likely than older residents to consider leaving the state because of the cost of living.
“One of things — as a mom of two boys who are 27 and 24 — that gets me worried is that young people are leaving Florida because they can’t get the jobs here that will pay for them to afford to live here,” Hunschofsky said.
“So they’re going to Chicago, they’re going to New York, they’re going to Atlanta, and all other places because … we don’t have that cluster that we need of those high-paying jobs,” she said.
Grant, too, said sentiment about moving out of Florida is more pronounced among people in their 20s. “They’re more willing to go somewhere else.”
Many are also living with their parents in their 20s, staying where they can and saving money at an age when previous generations would have been able to move out, Grant said.
The poll supports those assessments, though with a caveat: The number of respondents in each age category is much smaller than the overall total, which makes the margin of error higher than for the survey as a whole.
There is a clear pattern:
— Among 18- to 24-year-olds, 72% are considering leaving; 28% aren’t.
— About 60% of people 25-34, 35-44, and 45-54 are considering leaving; about 40% aren’t.
— It drops off, to 39% considering leaving for those age 55-64 and 27% for people 65 and older. The vast majority in the older age groups aren’t considering leaving.
There was no difference between men and women.
Politics
There is a political element to people’s decisions to come to Florida and whether to stay or go.
Gov. Ron DeSantis has frequently said people are drawn to the state because they like the political climate, which has turned rightward during his time in office.
On Monday, he repeated one of his frequent assertions: that Florida will get another influx of residents if Democrat Zohran Mamdani is elected mayor of New York.
“You know you’re going to see even more of this on Tuesday night depending on what happens in that mayor race. Really, really problematic to have the biggest city in America potentially go with somebody that makes Bill de Blasio look like Ronald Reagan, and that’s going to have impacts. It’s going to have impacts on the state of Florida. I know that,” DeSantis said at a news conference in Jacksonville.
Democrats were much more likely in the survey to say they’re thinking about moving out of Florida because of the cost of living and Republicans aren’t.
The survey was about economic issues, but pollsters ask multiple demographic questions on surveys. The polling initiative didn’t publish the partisan breakdowns, but provided them in response to a request.
Among Democrats, 39% said they’re seriously considering moving out of Florida, 25% said they’re somewhat considering moving, 21% said they’re not really considering it and 16% said they’re not at all considering it.
Among Republicans, 19% said they’re seriously considering moving out of Florida, 17% said somewhat, 29% said not really and 34% not at all.
Among independents, 24% said they were seriously considering moving, 34% somewhat, 24% not really and 19% not at all.
Other Findings
The poll found significant economic concerns, but also some degree of optimism about the future.
Almost everyone — 88% — surveyed was at at least somewhat concerned about inflation. Just 13% said they were not very or not at all concerned about inflation.
On the U.S. economy, 12% of Floridians rated it as excellent, 29% as good, 32% as fair and 28% as poor.
More than half were not confident in their ability to buy a home in the current market and more than eight in 10 said it was more difficult to buy a home today than five years ago. About half said home prices or mortgage interest rates are too high.
Finances are tight for many, with 44% saying they live paycheck to paycheck and another 28% saying they sometimes live paycheck to paycheck. Another 28% said they don’t.
“For most Floridians, financial security feels one expense away from collapse,” Monica Escaleras, chair of FAU’s Department of Economics and director of the Polling Initiative, said in a written statement.
Optimism, mostly
The poll found that most Floridians believe in the American Dream — the notion that hard work leads to getting ahead and a good life — with 53% of Floridians believing it “still holds true today” compared to 42% who said it did in the past but doesn’t any more.
“Floridians believe in the ‘American Dream,’ but they are paying dearly for it,” Escaleras said. “The Florida promise of sun, growth and upward mobility remains alive, but it is getting expensive to hold on to.”
In terms of future outlook, 36% are very confident that they and their households have a good chance of improving their standards of living in the next two to five years, and 30% are somewhat confident.
Just 4% were very doubtful and 12% somewhat doubtful. The rest were neither confident nor doubtful.
Women were less optimistic than men. They were 9 percentage points less confident than men about the chances their households’ standard of living would improve and 9 percentage points less likely to believe that future generations would have a better life than theirs.
About half of Florida men rated the current state of the U.S. economy as excellent or good; just one-third of women felt that way.
Among Democrats, 26% said the U.S. economy was excellent or good. Among Republicans, 58% said it was excellent or good.
There was also an enormous partisan difference about whether the American Dream still holds true.
Among Democrats, 38% said it still does. Among Republicans, 70% said it still holds true. Among independents, it was 43%.
Fine print
The American Dream Sentiment Survey was conducted by the Business and Economic Polling Initiative, which is part of FAU’s College of Business.
The survey of 1,000 Florida adults was conducted online using email, text and app-based invitations from a research company. The survey was conducted between Sept. 30 and Oct. 10.
The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the full survey. The margin of error for smaller groups, such as Republicans or Democrats, or men and women, is higher because the sample sizes are smaller.
Sun Sentinel staff writer Cindy Krischer Goodman contributed to this report.
Political writer Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon.