Over the past decade, the 18- to 24-year-old age group in Southwest Florida has been growing slightly faster than in the rest of the state and has trounced the national rate. It is still the smallest age group in the region, but with more education and job opportunities, fewer youths are being lured away from their Southwest Florida homes.

From a workforce development perspective, that's good news. Local employers are gaining a larger pool of young, educated employees, a trend that will help attract more firms in need of those kinds of workers, say economic development leaders.

"We've really isolated that 18-to-24 age group over the last few years to track it because that is our future workforce," says Pamela Cox of the Lee County Economic Development Council.

Lee County's 18-to-24 group is growing three times as fast as nationally, boasts the council's Web site. Its statistics say the 25-to-44 age group outpaced others in Lee from 1980 to 1997 and the 45-to-64 group has led the pack for the most part since 1997. But in 2000 and 2001, the 18-to-24 group gave their elders some competition. From 1997 to 2002, that group increased by 14.5 percent in Lee and by 40 percent in Collier, according to Lee EDC figures.

Statistics from the Economic Development Council of Collier County differ, but tell a similar story: The 18-to-24 age group has been growing dramatically faster than the national rate and is expected to continue. From 1995 to 2000, that population in Collier grew at an average annual rate of 3.58 percent compared with 1.46 percent throughout Florida and 0.78 percent nationally. For 2000 to 2005, Lee's 18-to-24 group is growing at an average annual rate of 5.53 percent compared with 5.32 percent in Collier, 3.11 percent statewide and 1.57 nationally, according to Ken Sanford, research director for Collier EDC

But the 18-to-24 population is still a small fraction of the total-about 6.5 percent in Collier and 6.3 percent in Lee, as of 2002. Although in migration accounts for some of the growth, much of the increase is simply due to the fact that 17- and 18-year-olds are not leaving the area as soon as they finish high school. Florida Gulf Coast University, which opened its doors five years ago, and the expansions of Edison Community College and other colleges allow students to further their education without leaving Southwest Florida.

FGCU serves many older students, but a growing majority falls into the 18-to-24 category, says James Lynch, the university's dean of enrollment management. What's more, the average age of first-time students entering FGCU for 2003 is slightly less than 18 years old-a year younger than in 2002, he says. More students are going right through high school and directly to college rather than taking a year off before college, or starting elsewhere and then transferring, he says. Although most FGCU students are from Charlotte, Collier, Glades, Hendry and Lee counties, more are arriving from South Florida, especially Broward, Dade, Palm and Sarasota counties.

Lynch considers the numbers of public high school graduates when anticipating FGCU enrollment. And those numbers have jumped, partly because of the "Baby Boom Echo," a rise in birth rates from about 1977 to 1990. Projections show that, in coming years, Southwest Florida will see higher spikes than much of the country in the numbers of public high school graduates-more than a 25 percent increase by 2012, Lynch says. He chalks that up to more-and younger-people moving to Florida, and to families moving within the state for employment opportunities or family priorities.

The university also continues to attract more students with its growing variety of programs. "One of their goals is to support the business community and to be able to generate future employees," says Lee EDC's Cox. New programs in construction management and hospitality management cater to the area's dominant industries. The university also has, or is planning, programs in biotechnology, environmental and marine sciences, and engineering.

Cox equates the rise of the younger workforce with Lee County's growing number of technology firms, which often hire young, technology-savvy employees. Sony and the Gartner Group both opened in the mid-1990s, she says. "Since then, we've seen companies like Linex and Apollo Information Service and Accudata coming in."

FindWhat.com, which started locally, has a young workforce, including a chief executive officer who is 33. The firm has been recruiting aggressively and hiring primarily local talent, many in their 20s, says Bonnie McFarland, human resources director. The company recruits through job fairs and local colleges, including FGCU, Edison Community College, Southwest Florida College and International College. The company started in 1998 with four employees and had grown to about 160 as of June 2003. Of those, 48 percent were under 30 years old and 22 percent were in the 18-to-24 age group employed in various positions, including customer relations, technology and finance.

"This is a very attractive place to come," says Karen Yagnesak, director of marketing and communications. "We're a young, dynamic company, we're growing quickly, and there are a lot of interesting positions within the company."

Those kinds of companies offer opportunities to young workers who would historically have left the region for better jobs, and the growing number of qualified employees helps draw more firms to the area, says Cox.

However, those firms are still a minority in Southwest Florida, says Sanford of the Collier EDC. "There are pockets of [companies] that require the younger, techie kind of jobs," he says. "The share of the population still rests with the older. And, because of national aging patterns and this area's current demographics, we're actually getting older."

"All of the population growth in Lee County at this time is due to net migration," according to Sue Patterson, who works in the Census Data Center for the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation. A population study by the University of Florida shows the number of deaths has been surpassing the number of births since 1995. "The natural increase is actually negative," she explains. "This tends to indicate an older population in an area, rather than a younger one."

Those older residents power the region's dominant industries-those related to construction and service, says Sanford. "One of the pulls of the 18-to-24s and one of the reasons it's continued to grow so fast is there have got to be people to service the elderly population," he explains. "The driver of the young working age has been-and probably will be for the foreseeable future-growth in the older population, which causes needs for housing, for service industries, and that's a real push in that age group."

Although those are the jobs that are keeping the 18- to 24-year-olds in the region, the growing opportunities for higher education will definitely have an impact on the long-term demographics, he adds. "Because of Florida Gulf Coast, and because of the expansions at Edison Community College and places like that, folks will make the decision to stay here, get educated here, and probably stay here after that. So that will help increase that bracket even more than what the projections will show," he says.

And that could help incubate new businesses, he adds. "Obviously, if there's an available labor pool of highly skilled, say, engineers or software developers in the area," he says, "there will be a start-up of software development companies in order to employ those kids."