Ventura County will have a majority Hispanic population by 2040 — 10 years earlier than had been previously forecast, state population experts predicted Monday.

The emergence of a Hispanic majority will come shortly after the county's population tops 1 million, according to the prediction.

Statewide, however, the forecast says Hispanics will not become a majority until 2042, four years later than projected in the previous forecast, compiled in 2004.

The projections were issued by the state Department of Finance, which tracks population and demographic trends in the state.

By 2040, the department forecasts that Ventura County will grow from its current population of 817,346 to slightly more than 1.1 million people — with about 615,000 being Hispanics.

The population projections show that Ventura County will be 54 percent Hispanic, 36 percent white, 5 percent Asian, 1 percent black, 0.3 percent American Indian, 0.1 percent Pacific Islander and 2.1 percent multiracial.

All of the net population growth will be the result of increases in the Hispanic population, the report indicates.

The state forecast projects that the number of non-Hispanic whites in the county will decrease from 453,905 in 2010 to 416,640 in 2040.

In the same period, California's population is expected to increase from 34 million to 59 million, about a 74 percent increase. It will become majority Hispanic by 2042, the numbers show.

"Though California is the first one to feel the impact of population growth, it's not unique for this area," said Arcela Nunez-Alvarez, acting director of the National Latino Research Center.

"We are seeing similar trends in population growth in various parts of the country, including in the Midwest," she said. "This region is a gateway to the rest of the nation."

For Ventura County schools, the county's growth will mean more construction in the long term, County Superintendent of Schools Charles Weis said. The growth will be much easier to absorb in the short term because enrollment has not been increasing recently, he said.

"We're treading water when it comes to growth in public education in Ventura County," he said.

In the past decade, Hispanic enrollment had increased between 0.7 percent and 0.8 percent annually, Weis said.

In California, the fastest-growing counties by percentage will tend to be smaller, more rural and evenly split between Southern and Northern California, according to the report.

Of the 10 fastest-growing counties percentage-wise, only Riverside, San Joaquin and Kern already have more than 500,000 people.

Most of the absolute growth, however, is expected to occur in Southern California. Of the 10 counties projected to absorb the most growth, seven are in Southern California.