The number of people in the United States identifying as Jamaican because they were either born in the English-speaking Caribbean nation or are of Jamaican heritage has held steady over the last decade, according to U.S. Census figures.
And now Florida, where the Jamaican community began growing in the late 1970s and ‘80s, has edged out New York as having the largest population of Jamaicans in the U.S. The overall population increased by almost 100,000 people between 2011 and 2021, according to the American Community Survey, which reported the overall Jamaica population in the United States to be nearly 1.2 million compared to about 1 million a decade earlier.
Rupert Rhodd, a Parkland resident who moved to Broward County from New York over 30 years ago and today heads the Coalition of Jamaican Alumni Associations of Florida, says he isn’t surprised by the estimated 321, 189 individuals of Jamaican descent who currently call the state home compared to New York population of 311,753.
