SC unemployment rate fell in October, but many remain out of work due to COVID-19
South Carolina’s workforce department said that the state’s new unemployment rate shows the state moving back in the direction it was in prior to the COVID-19 pandemic when businesses and the economy slowed down. But more than 100,000 South Carolinians still remain out of work.
South Carolina’s unemployment rate dropped to 4.2% in October, down from the state’s September rate of 5.2%, the state’s Department of Employment and Workforce announced Friday.
Last month, DEW said that there were 100,333 South Carolinians who were out of work and looking for a job, down from 125,120 people who were unemployed in September.
DEW’s director Dan Ellzey said Friday that 28,000 people found work in October.
“The important part is that these people left the ranks of the unemployed because they got a job, not because they gave up on looking for a job,” Ellzey said.
After South Carolina’s first COVID-19 cases back in March, businesses and schools shut down, decimating the state’s workforce.
DEW offered some good news on Friday, saying that the leisure and hospitality, education and health services, financial services, construction, manufacturing and government sectors — all sectors that were negatively affected by COVID-19 — logged job growth in October.
But, overall, DEW said that those sectors and trade, transportation and utilities industries in the state still have fewer people working in them compared to a year ago.
Before COVID-19, South Carolina’s unemployment rate in January was 2.4%, an historic low. It reached a high of 12.8% in April when the state began to log some of its highest daily virus case counts.
Nationally, the unemployment rate for October was 6.9%, down from 7.9% in September.
“October’s employment situation is a huge stepping stone in the economic recovery process for South Carolina,” Ellzey said.
