This Week in Jacksonville: Business Edition – Florida’s economic progress, exponential growth

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Florida‘s economy is on par with Spain as the 15th largest in the world.

The goal is to grow gross domestic product (GDP) from $1.6 trillion (in 2023) to about $2.24 trillion, making it 10th in the world.

PREVIOUS EPISODE: City advancements in innovative tech companies

Florida Chamber of Commerce president Mark Wilson is the next guest on this episode of This Week in Jacksonville: Business Edition.

“It wasn’t too long ago that Florida was known as a place for tourism and agriculture and construction,” Wilson says. “And it wasn’t too long ago that our education system wasn’t that great.”

Fast forward to 2024, and according to Wilson, Florida has made tremendous progress.

“Florida is known as one of the best places in the world for health care, for modeling and simulation. We’re number one in the world for aerospace, for example. And we now have the number one rated college and university system in the United States for eight years in a row and top ten K-12 systems.”

Wilson talked about the Florida Workforce Needs Study 2.0 report.

The big questions from the Florida Chamber: “Where do we go next and how do we create not just great jobs, but how do we make people aware of them, and how do we get them trained for them?”

More jobs will be needed to keep up with growth across Florida, specifically in Northeast Florida.

Wilson said Duval County will have about 200,000 people between now and 2030. That means about 80,000 new jobs will be created.