How did hurricanes change Tampa Bay’s job market?

Maddie Sharp was without work for a month after Hurricane Helene swamped Willy’s Burgers on St. Pete Beach.

She took odd jobs painting and cleaning, spent some savings, racked up credit card debt, missed a few bills — and learned, after abruptly losing power, why she should pay her utilities on time.

She thinks she’s one of the lucky ones. Three weeks ago, Sharp found a serving job at Tommy’s Hideaway, a pizza shop in Gulfport that hired displaced workers despite taking on storm damage. Six or seven of her co-workers — including her mom, who worked alongside her at Willy’s — still haven’t found steady work.

Though thousands saw jobs vanish overnight in Tampa Bay, statewide unemployment numbers released this month suggest the region has avoided a large-scale employment crisis after two hurricanes roiled labor markets.

Tampa Bay’s unemployment rate ticked up by just half a percentage point — from 3.3% to 3.8% — from October 2023 to 2024. Over that same period, the state’s unemployment rate remained the same, at 3.3%.

Across Florida, employment in leisure and hospitality dropped slightly after Helene hit, with 18,500 fewer jobs in October compared to September. The state’s unemployment has stayed below the national rate, 4.1%, for four years.

Earlier this month, analysts attributed sluggish national economic growth to the storms and labor strikes that battered the country. Nationally, leisure and hospitality jobs remained flat.

But Florida doesn’t appear to be the problem.

Experts offered a few reasons why Florida’s economy has weathered destructive back-to-back storms.

Larger employers were spared the worst

Monthslong delays in reopening are especially felt by small businesses, said Michael Snipes, a tourism professor and economist at the University of South Florida. But larger employers — like hotel chains on the beaches — rebounded faster, preserving most jobs, he said.

Other job sectors offset losses

For every job lost in hospitality after hurricanes, more jobs may arise in construction, as repairs and maintenance work become more essential, said Sean Snaith, an economic forecaster at the University of Central Florida.

In Florida, the hospitality labor market is growing at a slower rate than it is nationwide. But construction employment growth has outpaced the rest of the U.S.

Inland businesses in locales like Clearwater, Gulfport and St. Petersburg have also hired some staff from the beaches.

Hurricanes’ economic effects are short-lived

It might not feel that way for those still fretting over totaled cars and mildewed floors, but the macroeconomic effects of storms are felt in the first weeks after devastation, not during subsequent fiscal quarters or years, Snaith said.

And Snipes doubts that Florida’s tourists and snowbirds are staying away this year.

“From a tourist’s perspective, it’s just one storm,” he said.

These numbers aren’t final

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which tracks federal employment data, relies on surveys to track preliminary unemployment numbers. Those numbers could change in the spring when the government adjusts the numbers based on more accurate measures, Snaith said. A low survey response rate among leisure and hospitality employers nationally may have clouded the picture on the ground, The New York Times reported.

Three weeks ago, Jonathan Hewett, who runs a local jobs board called Service Station, was swamped with pleas for help from hospitality workers.

Now the requests have slowed, he said. More employers are posting opportunities. Friends who lost jobs in the industry have found new work, albeit in ”random” sectors, he said — in mobile car cleaning and insurance, for example.

”I’m pretty much the only one (from Willy‘s) doing the thing I was doing before,“ Sharp said.

Even with a new job, Sharp still can’t afford to replace the car she lost during Helene.

So she sometimes walks to work — another 30 grueling minutes before a long day on her feet.