Some of Florida's cities don't want spring breakers. With the state's economy booming, many don't need them.

• Miami Beach's mayor recently said officials "don't want spring break in our city."
• Miami Beach isn't the first city to discourage the spring break crowd. Another did so 37 years ago.
• While spring breakers boost local economies, Florida's economy as a whole has been diversifying.

While we may have the ancient Greeks to thank for the origins of spring break, thank Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for the raucous party we know today.

The members of the Colgate University swim team kicked off the trend in 1934 when they went looking for warmer training waters, and the party really took off with the release of the 1960 film "Where the Boys Are," which was shot in Fort Lauderdale.

By 1985, roughly 350,000 students were descending on the city during their March and April breaks, spending an estimated $120 million. Within two years, Fort Lauderdale's mayor, Bob Cox, had had enough, saying in an appearance on ABC's "Good Morning America" that the city could "use far less" spring break visitors.

On March 19, Miami Beach's mayor, Dan Gelber, expressed a similar sentiment about the annual festivities.

"We don't ask for spring break in our city. We don't want spring break in our city. It's too rowdy, brings too much disorder, and is simply too difficult to police," said the mayor, whose frustrations have been building for years.

While the city this year dedicated more police officers to managing spring break crowds than it had in years past, it declared a state of emergency and enforced a temporary curfew for the third consecutive year. On March 19, City Commissioner Alex Fernandez told The Wall Street Journal that the police had made over 300 arrests during the spring-break season, adding, "These aren't spring breakers, they're lawbreakers."  

While Fort Lauderdale's spring-break crackdown in the '80s was largely focused on college students, it's not clear how many of the people causing problems in Miami Beach — particularly related to recent shootings and firearm confiscations that city officials have linked to spring break — are students. The mayor's office did not respond to a request for comment.

Gelber has said, however, that he doesn't expect an uptick in arrests to solve what he considers a problem for the city.

"We're not going to arrest our way out of it. We're going to have to just stop spring break from happening here. That's the best thing we can do," he said, though exactly how the city plans to accomplish this remains to be seen.

Despite the mayor's comments, many young Americans are flocking to Florida. The Sunshine State has long been a popular spring-break destination, and Miami Beach, Orlando, and Fort Lauderdale are among the top spots that have attracted travelers.

Spring break is among the reasons the state generates billions of dollars in tax revenue per year from tourism. But city governments are unlikely to roll out the red carpet for every spring-break crowd. Some of these cities may be able to stay afloat with fewer spring breakers because they — as well as Florida as a whole — have been holding up well economically despite elevated inflation and speculation about a recession. A TD Bank analysis of US government data found that Florida's economy grew faster than any other East Coast state's economy last year, and in January the state's unemployment rate was 2.6%, the sixth-lowest rate in the nation.

Florida still benefits tremendously from tourism; the TD Bank analysis found that in 2019, the leisure-and-hospitality industry accounted for nearly 6% of the state's real GDP and 14% of its employment. But there are signs that booming population growth, which Florida's Office of Economic and Demographic Research has described as the state's "primary engine of economic growth," could help diversify the state's economy. Census Bureau estimates indicate Florida is the fastest-growing state in the nation, with roughly 752,000 residents moving there from July 2019 to July 2022. 

While population growth can drive up housing costs, it's "nothing but good news" for Florida's economy on the whole, UCF economist Sean Snaith told Voice of America in March.

"Every new household that moves to Florida needs a place to live, they need food, they need medical care, their children, if they have them, need schooling, and they clothe them," he said. "They need all the things that consumers buy."

While Florida still attracts many retirees, it's also drawn many younger residents who are more likely to take jobs and spend their hard-earned cash.

The strong population growth is among the reasons Florida had the third-highest rate of new-business applications per capita in 2022, according to the Economic Innovation Group. The state's largest metro areas, which include Tampa, Orlando, and Miami-Fort Lauderdale, have seen strong economic growth, low unemployment rates, and above-average wage growth in part because of the growth in population and in their finance and healthcare industries. 

A Cushman & Wakefield analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that Miami-Dade County, whose unemployment rate in January was 2%, added more jobs in 2022 than it did in any year over the prior two decades. The analysis said that while the county added jobs in leisure and hospitality last year, it also "increased its economic diversification" by reporting strong job growth in trade, transportation, and utilities. A RentCafe analysis published in March described the county as the second-most-competitive rental market in the nation, with over 97% of apartments occupied.

The Fort Lauderdale area, meanwhile, added over 32,000 private-sector jobs in 2022 — led by growth in professional and business services — and ended the year with a 2.2% unemployment rate. 

Fort Lauderdale is 'more of a chill kind of place' now, and its economy is starting to loosen up

In 1986, when Cox decided Fort Lauderdale's 30-year run as the spring-break capital of America needed to end, the city began stepping up enforcement of hotel and bar capacity limits and tightened open-container laws. The number of arrests in the city during spring break more than doubled in 1986 from the same period in 1985.

The city also got an assist from the state government, which in 1985 raised the state's drinking age to 21 from 19.

Over the next two decades, the number of students flocking to Fort Lauderdale fell from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands. 

While thousands of college students still frequent Fort Lauderdale during spring break, the city's current mayor, Dean Trantalis, described them as "very well behaved."

The city's police force told Fox News on March 24 that there had been only two "notable" arrests related to this year's spring-break season.

"Fort Lauderdale is more of a chill kind of place," Trantalis said. "And I think most kids that come here appreciate that vibe more than something that might exist somewhere else."

In November, the city even became comfortable enough to institute a one-year program allowing alcohol consumption on some hotel beaches, reversing a 30-year ban.

Trantalis said that while Fort Lauderdale's economy "definitely benefits" from young spring breakers' spending on restaurants and hotels, its tourism industry isn't reliant on them during the spring-break period.

But as long as the spring breakers aren't causing too much trouble, Fort Lauderdale's bars, hotels, and restaurants that benefit from their visits likely don't want them to go anywhere else. While the city has reported strong tourism numbers over the past year, things could change if consumer savings continue to dwindle and the US falls into a recession. 

In Miami Beach, some officials have expressed concerns about the economic impact of a harsh spring-break crackdown — those concerns were among the reasons the city's curfew was not extended.

"A curfew is not a long-term solution," City Commissioner Ricky Arriola said on March 20. "We're taking it out on law-abiding businesses."