Things To Do In SW Florida

More Space Coast rocket launches mean a crowded fleet of support ships are already pushing Port Canaveral’s limits. So the state commissioned a study that suggests a $2.1 billion solution to give companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin dedicated places to dock.

Space Florida, the state’s aerospace finance and development authority, released Thursday the Florida Spaceport System Maritime Intermodal Transportation Study that’s been in the works for more than a year.

“It was really important for us to make sure we had every stakeholder input throughout the process,” said Space Florida president and CEO Rob Long.

“It’s a pretty comprehensive study,” he said. “It allows us to understand what the scope of the challenge ahead of us would be to meet the demands that we’ve seen in terms of industry.”

The players include NASA, the Space Force, Port Canaveral, commercial launch companies, environmental groups and others as it ranked the pros and cons of six potential locations to expand the port. read more

By MATT OTT (AP Business Writer)

The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits was unchanged last week and remains historically low as the labor market continues to show resiliency in the face of high interest rates and elevated inflation.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that unemployment claims for the week ending April 27 was 208,000, the same as the previous week. That’s the fewest since mid-February.

The four-week average of claims, which softens some of the weekly volatility, fell by 3,500 to 210,000.

Weekly unemployment claims are considered a proxy for the number of U.S. layoffs in a given week and a sign of where the job market is headed. They have remained at historically low levels since the pandemic purge of millions of jobs in the spring of 2020.

The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark borrowing rate 11 times beginning in March of 2022 in a bid to stifle the four-decade high inflation that took hold after the economy rebounded from the COVID-19 recession of 2020. The Fed’s intention was to loosen the labor market and cool wage growth, which it said contributed to persistently high inflation. read more