SC Jobless Rate Soars To 9.5%; Find Jobs, Help Here

The unemployment rate in South Carolina soared in December to 9.5% - up by over one percentage point from the 8.4% figure recorded in November - according to numbers released Tuesday by the Employment Security Commission.

Greenville County has the best unemployment rate in the Upstate at 7.6%. Union County has the area’s worst jobless rate at 14.7%. For Union County, that’s up more than 4% since December 2007.

Click play on the video tab above to see Chris Cato’s story on why competition for limited jobs is about to get even more fierce.

December saw the largest job losses on record with more than 22,000 positions lost. The 9.5% jobless rate is the highest recorded since January, 1983.

The ECS reports a record 217,171 people are now unemployed in the state. That figure grew by over 25,000 last month with ongoing layoffs and an expanding work force.

Job losses were felt most in professional and business services, leisure and hospitality, manufacturing and construction.

The manufacturing and construction job losses totaled 3,500 in December according to the ESC. Construction has posted losses for the last 14 consecutive months, while manufacturing has posted nine consecutive months of job losses.

“So where do we go from here,“ asked U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham in a written statement. “I don’t believe Congress and the President can solve all of our economic problems nor should we try.  But I do believe we can get the ball moving in the right direction with the passage of a responsible stimulus package that contains the appropriate mix of tax cuts and spending on infrastructure projects.  If the tax cuts or spending do not create jobs in the near term, they should not be in the stimulus package.“

All 46 counties in the state saw their numbers increase. Allendale County has the largest unemployment rate in South Carolina at 19.7%, that’s up more than two percentage points from December. Lexington County has the lowest rate at 6.5%.

Here are the jobless rates for counties in the Upstate with their ranking compared in South Carolina included:

(7) Union 14.7%
(14) Cherokee 13.2%
(23) Abbeville 11.4%
(24) Greenwood 11.2%
(25) Oconee 10.9%
(29) Newberry 9.7%
(30) Anderson 9.6%
(31) Spartanburg 9.4%
(32) Laurens 9.3%
(38) Pickens 8.0%
(42) Greenville 7.6%

The unemployment rate in South Carolina in January, 2008 was 6.1%. There are 87,000 more unemployed workers in the state compared to one year ago.
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