2 min read February 2024 — In recent years, Palm Beach County has shifted gears in terms of economic activity and growth to become a more diverse business ecosystem with job opportunities across finance, professional services, real estate, and other sectors.
“We’ve had a tremendous wave of excitement in Palm Beach County across multiple sectors all at once, building a sense of pride and a desire to continue investing in this community,” Andrew Duffell, president of Research Park at FAU, said at the recent Invest: Palm Beach 2023-2024 leadership summit hosted by Capital Analytics at The Ben Hotel.
Duffell was joined by other speakers across the legal, consulting, wealth management, and small business development fields to discuss during the opening panel how current trends are transforming the makeup of Palm Beach’s economy and businesses
To put Palm Beach’s new era of growth in perspective, from 2018 to 2020 the county’s annual gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 6.6% from $87.3 billion to $93.5 billion. But according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis data, county GDP had reached $117.5 billion by 2022, increasing by more than 25% during the height of the pandemic. A contributing factor was the wealth migration to the Sunshine State that turned Palm Beach County’s slower paced tourism-centric economy into a dynamic ecosystem for private wealth and finance.
“The transition from a retiree community to a hub for younger professionals has unlocked new income streams across the region,” said Kristin Turner, senior managing director at RBC Wealth Management.
Global leaders in finance, such as Blackrock, Citadel, Goldman Sachs and others established new operations in Palm Beach, bringing with them higher wages and a vested interest in building the community. “Several firms and significant capital have relocated to Florida. If you want to be successful, you have to be deeply ingrained in the community,” Kaufman Rossin’s Principal of Business Consulting Services Carlos Diaz noted during the panel.
With industry growth established in Palm Beach County, business leaders and community advocates have become increasingly vocal about the challenges facing the workforce, namely housing and inflation.
“$700 million in funding directed at workforce and affordable housing are coming to Florida. The unknown is how much of that is going to come down to South Florida,” noted Gary Lesser, managing partner at Lesser Lesser Landy & Smith PLLC.
He added, “we have become a more premium economy for hiring people, with inflation still putting pressure on our talent pool’s wages.”
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