VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. — With the announcement that federal unemployment benefits will soon come to an end in Florida, some business owners say they are seeing applications suddenly flooding in. 

At Oceanside Beach Bar and Grill, business is booming. While that makes staff happy, with a labor shortage, it is hard for servers like Helena Cortez to keep up.

“I tend to have 10 to 12 tables at a time, which can be a lot, and being short staffed its like we don’t have an extra set of hands to help,” she said. "I work a lot of doubles. I work from like 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day, so it gets to be a lot.”

Owner John Lulgjuraj says he’s struggled to fill 70 positions, believing federal unemployment benefits played a role.

“Hundreds of man-hours were wasted, scheduling and setting up interviews, coming in on those days, you know you schedule 15 interviews in a day, managers come in on their days off and people aren’t showing up and it was such a loss,"he said. "At the end of the day, people had to make real decisions and, you know, if they've made more money staying home and getting paid, who wouldn’t take that opportunity, and no one is absolutely to blame for that”

He wrote to Gov. Ron DeSantis about this issue and now feels like a weight has been lifted, after hearing Monday that Floridians receiving the weekly $300 dollar Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation benefit will no longer be able to collect that payment as of June 26.

“It was pretty much, 'Hey, lets motivate people to get back to work and turn the unemployment benefit into an employment benefit,' which our governor actually quoted which is awesome,” said Lulgjuraj.

Since that announcement, he says job applications have poured in. 

“Recently, in the last 24 hours, we’ve already received about a dozen applications, we already hired three on the spot yesterday which is awesome,” said Lulgjuraj.

Cortez is hopeful this change will mean more helping hands to take some of the pressure off her plate.

"I’ve seen a lot of people interviewing, which is really exciting because we could definitely use as much help as we could get," she said.

As more and more people show interest in joining his team, Lulgjuraj believes relief is in sight not just for him, but the industry as a whole.

“The opportunity is there and available," he said. "Definitely, I am looking forward to more people joining the work force and getting back and living that American dream."

Several other federal jobless benefits programs — including Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation and Mixed Earners Unemployment Compensation — will expire on Sept. 6.​