BRADENTON - The Suncoast population is booming, especially in Manatee County. That’s just one of the new things the 2010 U.S. Census is showing us.

We learned already from the census that Florida will gain two seats in congress due to its population growth. But digging into numbers for Sarasota and Manatee counties shows that we are getting younger, more of us are in the workforce — or want to be — and more of us are Hispanic.

The population in Sarasota County rose 13% since 2000. In Manatee County it shot up more than 20%. But it wasn’t just retirees relocating from the north; the percentage of those 65 and older actually went down in both counties in the last ten years.

And you can’t attribute the local increase all to immigrants. Their numbers didn’t keep pace with the overall rise, either. So where did the people come from?

Emily Fairchild, a sociology professor at New College in Sarasota, says we don’t know yet. “This is a jumping off point for us to take this more basic data and do more investigation to see if we can come with some explanation.”

That’s not to say that the census didn’t do its job. We need to know what the population is and where it lives to determine congressional representation and federal funding. “So when we see that Florida is gaining 16%, we gained two seats in the House Of Representatives…so it is significant,” says Fairchild.

And, because you wondered, most of the newcomers are not Hispanic. In fact, both Sarasota and Manatee counties have a smaller percentage then the national average. “These are county-wide numbers, so what we see in our neighborhood is not necessarily what we see at the county, state or national level,” says Fairchild.

Total Population (2000 to 2009)

Manatee Co. 264,002 –> 318,361 (+20.6%)
Sarasota Co. 325,957 –> 369,765 (+13.4%)

Foreign Born

Manatee Co. 22,235 (8.4%) –> 36,102 (11.5%) +3.1%
Sarasota Co. 30,416 (9.3%) –> 43,160 (11.7%) +2.4%

Hispanic/Latino Population

Manatee Co. 9.3% –> 12.9% (+3.6%)
Sarasota Co. 4.3% –> 6.8% (+2.5%)

Language other than English spoken at home

Manatee co. 12.3% –> 14.8% (+2.5%)
Sarasota Co. 10.5% –> 12.5% (+2.0%)

People Aged 16+ in Workforce

Manatee Co. 54.4% –> 58.0% (+3.6%)
Sarasota Co. 50.5% –> 52.7% (+2.2%)

People Aged 65 and Over

Manatee Co. 65,647 (24.9%) –> 69,859 (22.3%) -2.6%
Sarasota Co. 102,583 (31.5%) –> 108,933 (29.6%) -1.9%

Source: http://factfinder.census.gov