Florida is ending federal unemployment benefits. Will it solve the worker shortage?

Since he was laid off from his job as the general manager of a Sweet Tomatoes restaurant in Kendall at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, Jeff Robertson, 41, has been getting by on unemployment benefits and food stamps. He once had a steady job that he enjoyed and earned him over $60,000 a year, but now he says he’s teetering on the brink of poverty.

Robertson said he has applied to 56 jobs since he was laid off, hoping to land something that matches the pay and skill-level of his previous position, but he’s had only one interview — for a position that paid significantly lower than his previous job. When he asked if they could match his pre-pandemic salary, the potential employer said no and wished him luck.

On May 24, the Department of Economic Opportunity announced that Floridians would stop receiving the $300 per week from the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation program more than two months before it is set to expire in September. Starting this week, Robertson and thousands of others will lose the federal benefit, leaving them with the state’s unemployment benefit of $275 per week, one of the lowest unemployment benefit rates in the country.

While cutting the benefit will likely spur some workers to reenter the labor market, others may find themselves financially stressed in a region noted for high housing and transportation costs, according to Ned Murray, a researcher at Florida International University.

In announcing the decision to end the federal subsidy, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis blamed the worker shortage. “The reason is simple: we have over half a million job openings in the state of Florida,” he said. “I’m confident, with almost half a million job openings, that people are going to be able to get a job and get back to work.”

There are roughly 500,000 job openings in Florida and 503,000 unemployed people, according to Florida Department of Economic Opportunity, but only about 100,000 are receiving jobless benefits according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Employers trying to get back on their feet as the state emerges from the pandemic have struggled to find workers in an unprecedented labor shortage and are hopeful they’ll see more applications once federal unemployment benefits end. But many say they have doubts that it will solve the problem immediately.

Many workers, like Robertson, are holding out for jobs that pay higher than the low-wage openings that abound. Without the $300 per week from the federal government, Robertson is faced with the choice of underemployment or having to take multiple jobs in order to make ends meet.

Employers are cautiously optimistic that ending the benefit will help.

“It’s not a silver bullet,” said Bill Walker, the owner of Water Taxi, a Fort Lauderdale passenger boat service. He says he’s down 35 employees and that he’s started offering $1,000 signing bonuses as well as a $300 employee referral program in order to entice more workers. With pandemic restrictions easing across the country and international travel still limited, it’s been abnormally busy for the summer season.

“It’s unprecedented. People are coming from all over the nation to South Florida. Labor is the big thing that’s stunted everyone’s growth and customer service,” he said. “Will more people be coming out for work? I would think so but who knows,” he guessed, adding that he’s seen a small uptick in applications in recent weeks. “I’m hoping things will level out towards school season and parents go back to work.”

Robert Egert, the owner of Exquisite Catering by Robert had 55 full-time employees before the pandemic. When business starting picking up in February, he had 12 job openings. He still has six that he can’t manage to fill.

“Before the pandemic, I’d run an ad on Friday and get 40 applications over the weekend. Now I maybe get four or five,” Egert said. To lure more workers, he has raised wages by 15%, boosting lower-wage positions from $11 or 12 per hour to $13 or $14, and his highest wage jobs from $20 to $23 per hour. Between the higher cost of labor and the increasing price of goods, he said he’ll likely have to raise his prices in the coming weeks. And if he doesn’t hire more people soon, he’ll have to downsize the business, he said.

“I don’t want to go backwards. I’ve worked 14 years to expand my business to this size.” But Egert said he’s also optimistic that the combination of unemployment ending and schools resuming in the fall will see a return to previous employment levels.

Nicole Tacktikos, a recruiting manager at KW Property Management, which owns 250 buildings in South Florida, said the company has struggled to meet staffing needs throughout the pandemic for positions including front-desk workers, pool cleaners and maintenance workers. The company currently has 200 open positions.

“We’re all hands on deck,” she said. The company has been running ads and attending jobs fairs, where they are offering positions to recruits on the spot. In the meantime, the company has been relying on what it calls “floaters” to spread its work force across its properties in order to keep them up and running.

“What we’re hoping is that once this [benefit] runs out, people will be ready to join the workforce again,” she said. “I don’t know how much, but I think it will pick up some.”

But experts and workers say it’s more than just the unemployment checks that are keeping people out of the work force. Murray, the associate director of the Jorge M. Pérez Metropolitan Institute at FIU, said he thinks ending the benefit will only have a slight impact on the labor shortage.

“People have so many issues they have to deal with — commute times, childcare, workplace safety and pay,” he said. “There’s a real quality-of-life issue in South Florida and especially Miami-Dade,” he said. He cited low, stagnant wages paired with the increasing cost of living and the “out of control” real estate market.

Florida ranks 47th in the country for hourly wages according to the website ZipRecruiter but is the 25th most expensive state to live in. The average wage in Florida is $17 per hour, but Floridians must make $24 per hour in order to afford the average rent on a two-bedroom unit.

Nancy Torre, 53, worked in food & beverage at the Miami Airport before she was laid off in March 2020. She’d worked for the same airport food-service company for 26 years and worked her way up to become a shift supervisor, where she made $16.50 per hour. She’s working with the Unite Here union to try to get her same job back. Without it, she will likely have to start from square one, earning close to minimum wage. At that salary, she said, paying her mortgage, bills and and supporting her elderly mother would be impossible.

“Make $9 per hour? I’ve worked too many years for this. I’ve dedicated all my life to this job; I’m only asking for a living wage,” she said. “It’s very difficult for them to take away these $300 per week [payments].”

Robertson, the former Sweet Tomatoes manager, says that most of the jobs he sees posted pay around $13 an hour and are far from his home, requiring too much time and money to get there.

“Making $13 an hour just doesn’t cut it in this environment in Miami,” he said. Still, without the $300 per week from federal unemployment, he knows he may have to take one of those jobs. “If it’s what I have to do, it’s what I’ll do... DeSantis was not thinking from the position of what someone like me is going through.”

“I’m going to be impoverished and I’m afraid that cycle will continue. I feel like I’m being ostracized. It’s a sinking feeling,” he said, “It’s demoralizing.”