SC jobless rate inches up

South Carolina’s unemployment rate inched up to 6.7 percent in March from 6.6 percent in February, as more people began seeking work because of an improving economy or they migrated to the state for manufacturing jobs.

March marked the 14th consecutive month that the labor force has grown, according to a report released Tuesday by the S.C. Department of Employment and Workforce. It showed the number of South Carolinians working in March increased 5,838 from February and reached another all-time high with an estimated 2,096,110 people working.

The workforce is growing because people are feeling more confident about the chances of finding a job and are entering the job market, said College of Charleston economist Frank Hefner, and because workers are moving into the state to fill the growing number of jobs in fields like aviation and automotive manufacturing,

“We have both of those things happening,” said Hefner, who added that while creating high tech manufacturing jobs doesn’t help employ South Carolinians without the training to fill them, the services used and money spent by workers new to the state does ripple into the economy and create lower-skilled jobs elsewhere.

“I hate to use the term trickle down effect, but that’s what it is,” he said.

March also marked the 64th consecutive month of employment growth in the Palmetto State, the agency said. Although the jobless numbers still lag behind the United States rate of 5.5 percent.

South Carolina’s most prominent job increase in March occurred in construction, with an increase of 1,100 since February and 5,900 since March of 2014.

Construction makes up 15 percent of the gross national product, University of South Carolina economist Joey Von Nessen noted, and new home construction helps bolster other jobs sectors.

“You look beyond the sticks and the bricks and you’ve got a good piece of the economy there,” he said. “It’s a major, major industry and to see it come back is going to have a multiplier effect.”

The state also saw additional gains in education and health services, with an increase of 700 jobs, and government, with an increase of 100 jobs.

Industries reporting declines since February were leisure and hospitality (a decrease of 2,400); trade, transportation, and utilities (a drop of 1,500); professional and business services (a decrease of 700); financial activities (a drop of 500); manufacturing (a decrease of 200); and other services (a drop of 200).

However, Hefner noted that those drops were in large part due to seasonal adjustments - a complicated formula used to figure in cyclical job fluctuations.

“But if you look at non-seasonally adjusted (numbers), unemployment dropped in every county in the state,” he said. “That’s just remarkable.”

Lexington County led the state with the lowest unemployment, 5.1 percent. Allendale had the highest, 12.5 percent.

This story was originally published April 21, 2015 at 11:18 AM with the headline "SC jobless rate inches up."