Workforce Forecast 2025

Brandon Wilkerson, the Labor Market Analytics Director at the South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce shared statistics about South Carolina’s employment growth, unemployment rate, and job openings.

In December 2024, South Carolina had seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 4.7% compared with the national rate of 4.1%  -  while this represents a substantial increase from last year, this is still extremely low by historical standards. SC employers reported annual payroll growth of 2.6%, ranking our state the fourth highest in the country (source: S.C. Department of Employment and Workforce, December 2024).
 

Due to demand for healthcare, rising population, and an aging population - registered nurses have almost never been knocked off the top spot of this list. Retail salespeople and the supervisors of retail sales workers are not always at number two and three, this likely was due to temporary hiring for the holidays (Wilkerson, B.). The chart below lists the job postings by MSAs (metropolitan statistical area) in the state for January 2025. The top three employers that posted jobs in January were state government, AutoZone, and Prisma Health.

Brandon mentioned resources from DEW are available to workers both online or in person at SC Works locations across the state. An interim portal from the Coordinating Council for Workforce Development (CCWD) will soon launch to consolidate all possible job postings from every job posting platform while also enabling employers to measure the interest on a specific job posting. Additional resources offered, such as ROI one-pagers to educate jobseekers on priority occupations, can be found at Explore SC@Work | SC Department of Employment and Workforce.

View the recording for this webinar at Corporate Resources | Midlands Technical College.