Hospitality layoffs, furloughs dog job market

Battered by the COVID-19 pandemic, Florida employers in the hospitality and leisure industry continued to extend furloughs and issue permanent pink slips to workers after acknowledging that the pandemic has lasted well beyond their expectations when it shut down the economy in mid-March.

Despite the addition of more than 74,000 private sector jobs in Florida between June and July, the joblessness pervading the hospitality industry since mid-March helped push the state’s unemployment rate at 11.3% for July and kept the rate in the doubledigits for Broward, Palm Beach and MiamiDade counties.

On Wednesday, as Gov. Ron DeSantis appeared in Orlando to talk up the tourism industry, major hotels in the area filed more layoff notices with the state Department of Economic Opportunity.

“The crisis’s impact on the industry has been historic, swift and devastating,” Marriott said in a filing covering 187 workers at the JW Marriott Orlando Bonnet Creek Resort & Spa. Marriott’s World Center in Orlando will terminate 601 people starting Oct. 31, and the Marriott Village Orlando will sideline 154 people at a complex of three hotels: a Courtyard, a Fairfield Inn & Suites and a SpringHill Suites in Lake Buena Vista.

In South Florida. the historic Hotel Colonnade in Coral Gables said furloughs of 83 restaurant and banquet workers are likely to be extended for up to another six months. And the Shore Club South Beach Hotel in Miami Beach said a lack of financing forced it to close Aug. 17, leaving 117 people out of work.

Meanwhile. HMSHost, the worldwide operator of airport restaurants, followed up on notices for more than 1,700 employees at airports from Miami to Orlando by announcing layoffs for more than 700 workers at airports in Tampa, Sarasota, Fort Myers and Jacksonville.

Those already on unemployment will have the opportunity to seek federal supplemental benefits of up to $300 after Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Thursday that the state would apply to join a program authorized by an executive order signed by President Donald Trump.

Nearly three dozen states have already applied, with two distributing money to their residents.

Trump created the benefit Aug. 8 after Congress failed to reach an agreement for a new COVID-19 aid package. It’s available only to jobless Floridians who receive more than $100 in unemployment compensation per week and who are eligible for state benefits “for weeks of unemployment ending on or after Aug. 1,” according to the DEO.

As of Wednesday, the DEO said it had paid 1,913,474 people nearly $14.3 billion in state and federal benefits since March 15, with most of the money coming from Washington and a $600 weekly payout that expired in July.

After those payouts ended, the 1.1 million Floridians now on unemployment were reduced to a pretax state payment of $275 weekly, a sum that most report is far short of the money they need to cover their monthly household expenses including rent or mortgage payments.