Palmetto State News

South Carolina continued its economic recovery with the state's unemployment rate falling for the month of October. 

The state's unemployment rate for October dropped to 3.9%, a decrease of two-tenths of a percentage point from September 2021's 4.1% rate. For comparison the national rate in October was 4.6%.

"The trend for initial claims [job losses] also demonstrates outstanding recovery," Department of Employment and Workforce Executive Director Dan Ellzey said in a release. "In the first four months of the pandemic [March-June 2020], South Carolina averaged 152,525 initial claims per month. Over the past four months [July-October 2021], an average of only 7,731 initial claims have been filed per month. That is a 95% decrease.”

Ellzey highlighted the importance of the trucking industry, in particular, which has seen a high level of job postings over the past month. He said the state is automatically connecting anyone who makes an unemployment claim and has truck driving experience with local companies looking to hire.

"We’re now in a period where we’d typically consider ourselves to be in a period of full employment,” research economist Joseph Von Nessen at the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina told WBTW.

South Carolina actually reports having more people employed in October than before the COVID-19 pandemic started, saying it currently has 14,000 more workers than pre-pandemic.

WBTW reports that the state is only one of 11 that has seen overall job growth since the beginning of the restrictions of the pandemic.

Research Economist Joseph Von Nessen at the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina told WBTW that "we’re now in a period where we’d typically consider ourselves to be in a period of full employment now.”