The $14 he earned an hour, plus Social Security payments, left just enough for a dinner out now and again.
Then, this September, Hurricane Helene swamped Shorty’s in floodwaters. The storm, followed by Hurricane Milton, gutted the water and electrical systems — and Romano’s main source of income.
He never got a call from the owner telling him he was out of a job, but pictures of the wreckage said enough.
By mid-October, Romano was at CareerSource Pinellas, bowed over a keyboard, applying for unemployment. Two weeks after Milton, the lights were back on at Shorty’s. Staff mixed macaroni salads for a tentative Friday reopening. But Romano hadn’t heard anything about whether he’ll get his job back. He can’t bank on it.
Around him, dozens of other hospitality and service workers who had watched their jobs wash away did the same. At CareerSource centers in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, requests for unemployment assistance were up 30% just days after Milton compared to the month before.
In a region renowned for its sandy coastline, where billions of tourism dollars are pumped into the local economy by beachgoers each year, the storms’ aftermaths have spawned an employment nightmare.
Thousands of jobs vaporized overnight, without notice or severance pay.
Employees of motels and hotels who’d greeted guests in pressed polos. Servers and bartenders who slung Mai Tais in bucket hats. Teens who scooped ice cream. Hourly workers who hawked cabanas and inflatable beach toys. They all woke to jobs wrecked by water and sand.
Many already live on the margins while Florida’s cost of living skyrockets.
Tampa Bay’s mighty tourism economy is supported by two of the lowest-paid industries the federal government tracks. The average wage in food service is $16.67 an hour in Tampa Bay, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Grounds and cleaning workers make an average of $17.02.
With missing paychecks and no return date in sight, an overly competitive job market is met by a desperate rush for state aid, and workers wonder how they’ll survive.
“My income is gone, my home was destroyed, and all of my bills are still due,” said Taylor Reynolds, a 32-year-old bartender who was furloughed from her job at Bilmar Beach Resort on Treasure Island after five feet of storm surge wrenched the bar from its foundation.
Reynolds, who moved into a room at her boyfriend’s parents’ house after her South Pasadena condo flooded during Helene, said the $275 she’ll get from unemployment won’t come close to covering her expenses.
“I’ve applied to so many jobs, but it has been impossible because so many people are displaced not only from their houses, but also their work,” Reynolds said.
That’s on the back of an already difficult year for the service and hospitality industry. As the cost of living has increased and budgets have tightened, local businesses have taken a hit. Tips, Reynolds said, have been smaller, too.
“In past years, I would have had more of a cushion,” she said. “I don’t have that this year.”
Less than a mile up the beach from the Bilmar, one week after Milton’s landfall, a woman and a man sat at an outdoor table in the courtyard of The Sands of Treasure Island hotel, sipping fountain drinks.
Christy Cooper, who has managed the hotel for more than a decade, oversees a staff of 13, including Douglas Johnson, head of maintenance.
But on this day, there were no customers to check in, no reservations to take down. There were no air conditioning units to fix. Downed palms and water-logged appliances lay strewn across the courtyard. The pool was full of sand.
Johnson and Cooper exhaled cigarette smoke below the banana milkshake-colored breezeway.
“Needless to say, everybody is out of a job,” Cooper said, slowly shaking her head.
She’d come back to the property to salvage what little she could: the cashbox, office files, mementos. Surviving cleaning supplies, she’d pass to nearby hotels — those that stood a chance.
Built in 1946 as one of the earliest commercial hotels on Treasure Island, the Sands welcomed a host of guests like family. There were the regulars who came from Canada, Pennsylvania, Michigan year after year, whose kids the staff had watched grow up a summer at a time.
“It’s just sad to see it go,” Cooper said, her chair sinking into inch-deep mud.
Cooper said she would be OK. The company that owns and operates the hotel would find her other work. But she worried for her employees: Harry, who had worked the front desk for longer than she’d been around, and Aileen, who cleaned rooms.
Linda Payne worked at the hotel on and off since moving from Georgia in the early 2000s. At one point, she was head of housekeeping. Recently, she’d started working the desk, too.
“It’s just so much to take in at one time,” said Payne, 62. “The first hurricane was bad enough, then the second one came and left us with no hope whatsoever.”
Payne, who lives in a trailer park, said her unemployment check will just about cover her lot rent and utilities but won’t leave room for car and phone payments or food.
“I just want people to know that workers are going to be suffering,” Payne said. “We don’t know how we’re going to survive.”
Even searching for work costs money, Payne said. She has coworkers who can’t afford the gas to get to interviews.
The story is the same up and down the barrier islands, said Robin Miller, CEO of the Tampa Bay Beaches Chamber of Commerce.
Data from Lee County, home to Fort Myers, after Hurricane Ian paints a sober picture for what could come next. In the 12 months after Ian hit, dollars spent on tourism supported nearly 15,000 fewer jobs — a decrease of over 30%. Such a hit spread across Pinellas County’s 105,000 tourism-supported positions could force thousands to leave hospitality altogether.
Some workers Miller talked to are considering packing their bags.
Even for those whose storefronts survived, the coming year will prove difficult.
Lindsey Magness, who co-owns Grove Surf & Coffee in St. Pete Beach said returning to the islands after the storm felt like a demoralizing lottery. Some businesses made it through with limited damage. Others were destroyed.
Magness has seen the disparity firsthand. Her flagship shop was wiped out. A second Grove location, which opened in Indian Rocks Beach earlier this year, reopened this week. She’s had to shuffle employees around, cut hours for some, let others go.
“Making those decisions has been one of the absolute hardest things about going through this,” Magness said.
She worries about what’s to come as the islands rebuild.
“Sure, our cafe is open, but the whole neighborhood around us is a ghost town,” Magness said. “If there’s not tourism, if nobody’s here, there’s almost no reason to be open.”
Inland visitors could make all the difference.
“Come for lunch, come for dinner,” Magness said. “We need you.”
While hard-hit businesses restock flooded industrial freezers and line salvaged floors with fresh hotel carpets, those that fared OK are trying to plug gaps. Jonathan Hewett, who runs a hospitality jobs board called Service Station, asked employers to consider hiring if they can spare it.
Hewett also owns Finley’s Irish Pub in Clearwater. He hired two bartenders from Caddy’s Treasure Island location, which Helene reduced to splinters. He knows of a St. Petersburg hotel that took on two displaced housekeepers.
Even before all this, finding a job in hospitality was tough, Hewett said. Now, hundreds of unemployed workers are in competition.
For every position that gets posted on Hewett’s hospitality jobs board, 50 applicants leap to claim it. His inbox is flooded.
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