When Shelbi Arcand graduated from The Villages Charter School in 2014, she was one of 100 kids in her graduating class. This small community of young families wasn’t surprising given that her school was designed for children whose parents worked for The Villages, dubbed the world’s largest retirement community for people 55 and older. But when Arcand returned to The Villages in January, now thirty with a husband and two young daughters in tow, she found the demographics had shifted.
“You see young people now, driving golf carts everywhere, which you never saw back then,” she said.
Young people have generally been flocking to the Sun Belt states, like Florida and Texas, for job opportunities and relative affordability. However, The Villages is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the trend by revitalizing the old structure of a company town and anchoring the local economy to a single private company. The strategy seems to be working. According to a February report by the online moving services marketplace, MovingPlace, the second most common zip code for Gen Z movers is located in The Villages’ Lake County, FL.
While the national job market has been in a no hire no fire stasis, the economy in The Villages is growing. According to economists with the University of Central Florida, The Villages has the second highest rate of employment growth in the state with the education and health services sector growing an average 1.1 percent annually.
“This is a labor market that, by virtue of the retiree population, still continues to need these workers. So I think it’s a place of opportunity where in many places right now, hiring is a bit sluggish,” said Dr. Sean Snaith, director of the Institute for Economic Forecasting at the University of Central Florida. “Yeah, the driver of the demand for this labor are the retirees, but the people that are providing this labor, of course, are from younger generations.”
But for the young families moving into The Villages it’s not just about job opportunity but quality of life. Arcand, who works as a nurse practitioner for The Villages Health, lives in Middleton, a non-age restricted, family-friendly housing development for The Villages’ employees. Arcand says her family paid roughly the same for their home in Middleton as they did living in Atlanta and Miami. The difference, however, is the amenities that come with a Middleton address.
“We have the pool. We have golf cart accessibility and the school system accessibility,” she said. “It comes with the perks of a low crime rate. All of those kinds of things, which you can’t put a price tag on.”
The Holding Company of the Villages, a private entity, controls 57,000 acres in central Florida, spanning three counties. That monopoly gives them an unusual amount of control over town planning. At the center of their master planned community is the charter school, which Arcand says is part of the reason she returned to The Villages. Today, it’s a far cry from the relatively small school Arcand attended. Her old school building is now one of several campuses after a massive school expansion in 2023, which included a new 383,961 square foot high school campus. In a 2024 promotional video for Middleton, Mark Morse, president and COO of The Villages, noted the expansion developed with easy, walkable access to the school in mind.
The Villages’ unique ability to plan their communities may have saved it from the economic hardship threatening other Florida neighborhoods, where attracting younger residents hasn’t been so simple. Southwest Florida, including counties Collier, Lee, and Charlotte, saw the percentage of younger residents decrease relative to total population between 2020 and 2024. Economists in the Southwest region worry that a population nearing retirement may rock the economy as residents leave the workforce and resistance to new housing deters younger workers from coming.
“The development of Middleton itself would suggest that The Villages recognize the issue at hand as far as this imbalance of labor availability and being able to provide some of these amenities at a reasonable price,” said John Shannon, a research economist at Florida Gulf Coast University. “If they want to have their way of living, that’s great, but if you want to keep it affordable, you have to start considering how you’re going to get some of the younger population to want to live there as well.”
Development around The Villages is spilling out beyond the reach of the holding company as other developers jockey to get in on the influx of residents. In December, a developer proposed a 410 unit housing development in Lake County, and in February, an Illinois-based developer spent 12.4 million on a commercial property bordering The Villages. These investments, and Arcand’s return, are signs of just how far the area has come.
“We are all reminded by the mayor, commissioner and residents who have been in Wildwood for decades that there was no opportunity here for young people, and so kids would grow up and they’d move away because they couldn’t earn a living,” said Linda Piotrowicz, Public Engagement Specialist for the local government in Wildwood, Florida, which overlaps with The Villages. “The demand has skyrocketed here and that provides great opportunities for young people so they don’t have to feel like they need to move away, that they can stay here and raise their families here and that their kids and their grandkids will have opportunity here.”
