Workforce & Economic Development
Where Are They Coming From?
A new Florida Chamber Foundation case study holds up American Magic, BlueWind Technology and ST Engineering as workforce models worth copying. The programs are real. So is the math Northwest Florida’s up against.
The Florida Chamber Foundation has a new regional research case study out, “A Look At Creating Regional Solutions: 3 Promising Practices in Northwest Florida.“
- It opens with a number that garners considerable attention—Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa and Walton counties need to fill nearly 28,000 jobs over the next five years. And, according to the Florida Chamber, the four counties have already seen employment increase from more than 250,000 jobs in 2020 to nearly 400,000 in 2025.
Where the Jobs Are Now
Before getting to who’s supposed to fill the next 28,000 jobs, it helps to know what the region’s roughly 400,000 existing jobs actually look like.
The jobs are concentrated in a narrow set of sectors:
- Military employment: 32,151
- Full-service restaurants: 20,560
- Federal civilian employees, not counting postal workers: 16,330
- Teachers: 13,739
- Limited-service restaurants: 13,485
- General Medical & Surgical Hospitals: 11,739
- Local government: 10,934
In a word: government, education, hospitality, and healthcare, driven heavily by the region’s Air Force and Navy presence, are what actually employ Northwest Florida.
- Here is the breakdown by single employers:
| Employer | Employees |
|---|---|
| Navy Federal Credit Union | 8,713 |
| Walmart | 6,405 |
| Ascension Health Ministry Service | 4,675 |
| Baptist Health Care | 3,835 |
| Publix | 3,092 |
| West Florida Regional Medical Center | 1,422 |
| Morale Welfare & Recreation | 1,191 |
| Fort Walton Beach Medical Center | 1,066 |
| Sandestin Beach Hotel, Golf & Beach Resort | 1,057 |
| St. Joe Resort | 781 |
In its case study, Chamber Foundation spotlights three companies—American Magic, BlueWind Technology, and ST Engineering. They sit in a different lane than credit unions, grocery chains, hospitals and school districts.
- The three companies are where most of the region’s job growth will happen and where most of the 28,000-job gap will actually have to be filled.
Growing, But Slower Than Everyone Else
Florida’s population has grown 9% since 2020. On its own, that sounds healthy. Next to the rest of the state, it isn’t.
- Florida’s population growth leads the nation, up 12% since 2020, a rate that ties the state with Idaho and outpaces Texas by 2 percentage points, the Carolinas by 3, and Tennessee and Georgia by 6.
Losing the Florida Talent Battle: Northwest Florida is growing at three-quarters the pace of the fastest-growing state in the country. The region isn’t shrinking. It’s just losing the race for new residents to Central Florida, South Florida and the I-4 corridor, the parts of the state absorbing most of that 12%.
The Demographic Problem
And the growth the region does have is arriving at the wrong age. Today, 42% of Northwest Florida’s population is between 35 and 49. Adults 65 to 79 accounted for 32% of the region’s population change since 2020.
- Residents 15 to 34, the group that actually fills entry-level pipelines, accounted for just 18% of that growth.
Why this matters: A region growing three-quarters as fast as the state, with nearly a third of that growth coming from residents 65 and older, is not building the youth pipeline that fills 28,000 jobs through internships alone, especially when most of those jobs sit in government, education, healthcare, retail and hospitality rather than light manufacturing and defense-adjacent fields.
- The region’s high school graduation rate is a strong 93% across all four counties. That’s not the bottleneck. The bottleneck is that there simply aren’t enough young adults in the pipeline, locally, to fill 28,000 jobs through training programs alone.
We will need to attract new residents to make up the difference.
The math: Northwest Florida is growing at 9% since 2020, versus 12% statewide. Job growth sits at 1.8 percent. The region needs 28,000 more workers, and growth among residents 65–79 has outpaced growth among residents 15–34 by nearly two to one.
Three Case Studies
The Chamber’s brief profiles three employers that are meeting the moment.
American Magic, the America’s Cup sailing team that relocated from Newport, Rhode Island, in 2018, has hired five interns full-time through its Pensacola State College partnership since 2025, and eight more through the UWF Talent Catalyst, four of whom start this fall. It’s also brought in four teens from the Children’s Home Society’s YouthWorks program as interns working toward their GEDs. Chief Operating Officer Tyson Lamond told researchers the team assesses how interns handle conflict and whether they’re coachable, calling the communication gap a real obstacle: “Kids struggle with being able to talk to people.”
BlueWind Technology, which manufactures composite nacelles for GE Vernova’s wind turbines, has built one of the region’s more unusual pipelines: second-chance hiring. The company started with 48 formerly incarcerated employees in 2023, about half its workforce at the time, and grew that to 76 by 2025. President Henry Kelley calls the approach homegrown: “We solve our own problems.” BlueWind has also brought on six UWF Talent Catalyst graduates full-time since 2019, with six more currently interning.
ST Engineering, the world’s largest airframe MRO provider, has invested $60 million in its Pensacola hangar since 2018 and created more than 630 jobs. It also put over $300,000 toward Pensacola State College’s FAA-certified Airframe and Powerplant school on airport property, one of the only facilities in the country pairing an active MRO hangar with an A&P training school at a major international airport. A new A&P facility set to open in March 2027 will add capacity for 200 more students. ST Engineering’s Ryan Lee summed up why the region matters to the industry: “Pensacola is a hub for fresh talent in aviation.”
Teamwork & Partnerships
- September is Workforce Development Month, and the partnerships highlighted in the case study demonstrate how the Panhandle is putting workforce development into action by connecting employers, educators, and community organizations to build a stronger talent pipeline.
Across three companies and roughly two to seven years of effort, the documented placements come to a few hundred people, plus ST Engineering’s cumulative 630-plus jobs since 2018 and a forthcoming 200-seat expansion.
- Broaden the lens and the numbers grow: the UWF Talent Catalyst has 21 business partners beyond these three, and PSC alone runs 78 certificate programs across 32 subjects, including a CDL program that graduated 135 students with an 85 percent placement rate this year.
Read 3 Promising Practices in Northwest Florida Research Brief
Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves made the right decision by organizing a workforce summit. It truly was a call to action. This case study shows that the job challenge in our region is greater than any we’ve ever faced.