It was the missing cars that first alerted Maryann Ferenc: the economic rebound that she and many others had been hoping to see at Florida’s Pass-a-Grille Beach was already in danger of vanishing.

“July 4 and you could find a parking spot all day long, you could find several parking spots all day long,” says Ms Ferenc, who owns a number of restaurants in the Tampa area as well as a boutique hotel along that stretch of the Gulf coast.

“That was the first indicator, and you could just notice the difference, through the entire weekend and then the following week, you saw that drop.”