The Jacksonville area gained about 260,000 people over the past decade, pushing the population to 1.6 million as people of increasingly varied colors and backgrounds made homes in Northeast Florida, census data released Thursday showed.
Duval County’s population fell less than 4,500 short of one million people, a milestone it has almost certainly passed in the 16 months since the U.S. Census Bureau’s decennial headcount.
The five-county Jacksonville metro area grew by nearly one fifth since 2010, fueled by a phenomenal 43.9 percent growth rate in St. Johns County and a 76.4 percent rise in the metro area’s Hispanic population.
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