Outraged residents leave Sunshine State by Zuzana Zelenakova

Florida hit hard by the recession and the housing crash has experienced first decline in population since World War II. According to the demographers from University of Florida Sunshine State lost about 50,000 residents between April 2008 and April 2009. It is something unseen in Florida in past decades. Even during the Great Depression people were pouring into the state to find a job or just came on holiday. However, now, the combination of unfavorable economic factors and sometimes unreasonable public officials actions has driven out thousands. "You've had families with kids move out when housing prices went up too high," said University of Florida economist David Denslo! w. "And with construction down, immigrant workers have left." Researchers from the university rely mainly on electric companies´ data in combination with building permissions to find out changes in population numbers. For example, in Tampa Bay area, St. Petersburg Progress Energy has lost about 8,000 customers from the first quarter of 2008. Another energy supplier, Tampa Electric, reported the loss of 2,200 customers in the first half of 2009 as compared to the previous year. "It's difficult for the working middle class to justify living here," said Mike Jones, president of the Palm Beach County Economic Council. "As much as they may love the sunshine, as you squeeze them out, they may find it in their best interests to move." And it is certainly not helping that some Florida officials are getting raises while property taxes are on the way up at the same time. Even when it comes to the immigrants the numbers are falling. Mexican construction workers are leaving and al! so Colombians that left their home country about a decade or t! wo ago b ecause of violent and instable situation are returning to South America. However, most of the experts are considering this phenomenon to be only temporary lasting one or two years.

related story (sgx15298): http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090903/us_time/08599191991600...

by Zuzana Zelenakova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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