FLORIDA — New numbers show Central Florida’s unemployment rate at 6.9%, nearly 1% higher than the state average.

What You Need To Know

  •  Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, many people are now working from home

  •  That is bad news for businesses like $2.79 & Up Cleaners, which lost nearly $500,000 in 2020

  • The owners of the dry cleaning business, though, say they are starting to see business come back

But the numbers are trending in the right direction and if there is anyone that can tell you whether people are going to work, it’s your local dry cleaner.

At $2.79 & Up Cleaners, 45% of their business is from people dropping off either uniforms or professional attire.

For father and son business owners Wayne and Michael Stahlman, 2020 took them to the cleaners. Due to the lack of business caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, they saw losses of nearly $500,000.

“It was very bad," said Wayne Stahlman, the owner of $2.79  & Up Cleaners. "From March through August, we seen declines all year long.” 

Most of the people who they really started missing were their regular customers. 

“People that normally went to work, wore uniforms, business people, they were forced to work from home unfortunately," Stahlman said. "In the dry-cleaning industry we saw the big decline of that.”

But in 2021, the tide has begun to turn.

“It’s getting a lot better," co-owner Mike Stahlman said. "We have already seen the numbers each week, they have risen, you know, a little bit.”

According to Melissa Bongo, client services director for Thomas Crawford Recruiting, office job positions have also seen a recent uptick.

“It seems like January has really started off with resetting and recalibrating in-office employment,” she said.

While experts say it’s tough to measure how many workers are heading back into the office, from November to December the unemployment rates in Lake, Orange, Osceola, Seminole, and Sumter counties all dropped.

“Our clients are asking us to make sure that the clients are a little bit more flexible regarding in-office employment," Bongo said about professionals returning to their natural work space. "It seems things are turning around.”  

In January, the Stahlmans said $2.79  & Up Cleaners's business was up 10% from December. The local business is also now thinking of other unique ways to add revenue to help recover from some of the losses they suffered in 2020 by adding a delivery service.