Full Report

South Carolina is experiencing an economic boom with jobs growing rapidly across the state. This boom is substantially being fueled by massive federal investments in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and the CHIPS and Science bill (CHIPS) designed to drive job creation, while addressing challenges such as supply chain disruptions and climate change. The White House (2024) announced that as of June 2024, $5.4 billion in public investments and $17.3 billion of private-sector commitments had been made in South Carolina for infrastructure, clean energy, and manufacturing. This includes $2.7 billion for roads and bridges and $234.9 million for public transportation under the BIL. These investments are creating jobs across industries and sectors including manufacturing, clean energy, transportation, and construction.

The data in this report show that over the last several years, job growth across South Carolina has outpaced job growth at the national level. The state also boasts a low unemployment rate. But when we look beyond the headline numbers, we see that many workers across the state are being paid very low wages and family incomes are falling short of what is needed for a modest yet adequate lifestyle. South Carolina’s levels of inequality and poverty rates are high; in 2023, 13.9% of the state’s population fell below the poverty line, compared with a national poverty rate of 12.5%. Workers across the state also lack access to basic resources like paid sick leave and public transportation. Access to these resources would help many would-be workers participate in the labor market more easily.

These outcomes for workers and families reflect, at least in part, the long shadow of worker exploitation that started with the state’s horrific embrace of slavery and what continued to closely resemble slavery after it was outlawed. Today, South Carolina is one of just five states that has no state minimum wage and its workers have some of the lowest typical wages in the country. It is one of two dozen states with so-called right-to-work (RTW) laws that undermine workers’ ability to form unions and contribute to the lowest unionization rate in the country. These and other laws in South Carolina are designed to disempower workers, ensuring that wealthy corporations can continue to exploit their labor.

The state is now being presented with an opportunity to shift its strategy from labor exploitation to worker- and family-centered policies that would strengthen the economy for all South Carolinians. Pro-worker policies that allow more South Carolinians to participate in the labor market, be more productive, and share in the wealth they create are, in fact, pro-business policies that can help sustain the state’s economic growth. The federal funding bills mentioned above include pro-worker policy levers that state policymakers can use to ensure that the jobs being created in South Carolina are good jobs that truly serve workers and families, instead of reinforcing the inequities that have left so many across the state economically insecure.

South Carolina’s economy has diversified over time, but overall output is weak

The health of the economy nationally and in states are impacted by a myriad of factors. State policymakers have little to no control over some of these factors such as federal macroeconomic policy, natural disasters, foreign supply chain disruptions, or global pandemics. Their responses to these events, however, determine how well and how quickly the economy recovers. Below we examine South Carolina’s economy with a special focus on the post-pandemic period and how workers are faring in that economy.

South Carolina’s industrial mix from the antebellum period until today

The industrial composition of South Carolina’s economy has shifted substantially over time, but it continues to be shaped by its history of slavery and the relentless pursuit of free or exploitable labor. This is best exemplified by the state’s textile manufacturing industry, which began to flourish in the mid-1800s. Enslaved Africans were forced to farm the raw materials—namely cotton—on which textile manufacturing depended. South Carolina’s manufacturers were able to siphon off business from manufacturers in New England with the promise of low labor costs and weak labor standards. Wages were as much as 50% lower in South Carolina than in New England, mills were kept running 60 hours or more every week, and 30% of mill workers were children (Carlton 2016). By the mid-1950s, South Carolina’s mills produced more than half the clothing worn in the United States. As exploitative as mill work was, poor white South Carolinians viewed it as preferable to farm work, which was even more difficult and lower-paid.

Through the 1900s, the mills asserted near-complete control over economic and social life for a large share of white South Carolinians. Mills not only housed workers, but they also ran local schools, stores, religious institutions, and recreational activities—in part to “keep their workers close” and quell organized resistance to labor exploitation and dangerous working conditions (WYFF News 4 2022). The economic opportunity and generational wealth building provided by jobs in the mills were largely out of reach for Black South Carolinians. Under state law, Black people were legally excluded from all but the most menial jobs in the textile industry until civil rights lawsuits mandated integration during the mid-1960s (Bainbridge 2018). The textile industry was quicker to integrate than other industries, leading Black employment in the industry to grow significantly through the 1980s. However, Black advancement was curtailed by the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1992, which facilitated the pursuit of even lower cost labor outside the U.S. over the 1990s and 2000s and ushered in the collapse of South Carolina’s dominance in the industry.

Figure A shows a rapid decline in the number of workers employed in textile mills by the end of the 2000s. It also shows that this rapid decline in the textile industry was followed by rapid growth in another industry: the transportation equipment manufacturing industry, beginning around 2011. Today, what’s left of the textile industry in the state primarily supplies the U.S. military and the automative industry—South Carolina’s new primary manufacturing industry (Holdman 2024).

South Carolina’s industrial mix has become much more diverse. Yet, as we show below, it continues to be characterized by the exploitation of workers, strong opposition to worker organizing, subsidies to wealthy corporations, and lax regulation of businesses (Childers 2024a). South Carolina also continues to use this low-road economic development model to lure businesses from other states and countries, contributing to growth across several industries—especially auto, steel, tire, and aircraft manufacturing—as well as the expansion of warehousing, transportation, and logistics, among other sectors (AFL-CIO 2019; Childers 2024b; SCDC 2024a).

Figure B shows job growth across industries in the U.S. and in South Carolina between June 2010 and June 2019, when the state experienced significant job growth. These data reveal that job growth in South Carolina exceeded job growth nationally across almost all industries during this period. Professional and business services experienced the greatest growth at 38.2%, followed by the construction industry (33.3%), leisure and hospitality (30.9%), and manufacturing (25.6%). The growth in manufacturing in the state stands out when compared with an increase of just 11.1% nationally over this period.

South Carolina saw the least growth in state and local government, which grew by just 5.2% from 2010 to 2019, despite a population growth of 10.7% (America Counts 2021). According to the South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce (SCDEW 2023a, 19), most state and local public-sector workers work at the local level (233,400 in local government compared with 110,000 in state government). These local government workers are public school teachers and staff, police and firefighters, public health care staff, and other municipal employees. A significant number of both state and local government workers are employed in state (50,700 workers) and local educational services (112,400).

Job growth since the COVID-19 pandemic

South Carolina has had strong job growth as the state recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic. Figure C shows the percentage change in jobs for South Carolina and the nation between January 2020 and December 2023. These data show that South Carolina’s job losses during the pandemic were somewhat less than national losses. The data also show that since the recovery got underway, South Carolina and the Southern region had stronger job growth than the nation as a whole. This is not surprising given that across this period, South Carolina was one of the states experiencing the fastest population growth (U.S. Census Bureau 2023; U.S. Census Bureau 2024b).

Figure D shows that South Carolina has outperformed on job growth since the pandemic across a range of industries. These data show that the greatest growth since 2019 has been in the financial sector, which includes not just finance but also insurance, real estate, and rental and leasing, reflecting in part the growth in population across the state. Education and health (15.9%) and trade, transportation, and utilities (10.1%) both experienced greater than 10% growth. The industries with the least growth over this period were manufacturing (4.3%) and state and local governments (1.3%).

In many ways, South Carolina’s strong growth across industries in recent years served to diversify South Carolina’s economy and bring its industry mix more in line with the national economy. Figure E shows the share of South Carolina workers employed in each industry across the state in 2024. The single largest sector is trade, transportation, and utilities, which employs 18.9% of the workforce—almost one in five workers. This is just slightly more than the national average (18.3%). The largest individual subsector of the trade, transportation, and utilities industry in South Carolina is transportation and warehousing, which made up 20.6% of the industry as of December 2023 (SCDEW 2023a, 19). In addition to transportation and warehouse jobs, this industry further includes utilities, wholesale trade, and retail trade (including motor vehicle and parts dealers, food and beverage stores, clothing and clothing accessories stores, and general merchandise stores).

While state and local government experienced little growth since 2010, the public sector makes up the second largest sector of the state’s economy. The public sector includes workers who perform a range of important tasks for South Carolinians. Many of these workers are critical to maintaining public order, safety, and providing key services as teachers, police officers, firefighters, garbage collectors, bus drivers, and many other critical roles.

Despite strong job growth, the financial and the construction industries respectively make up just 5.2% and 4.9% of South Carolina’s economy. Their share of the state’s economy closely resembles their share of the total U.S. economy—5.8% and 5.2%, respectively.

Notably, despite strong growth in education and health, these industries account for a far smaller share of jobs in the state than the national average: 12.5% and 16.6% respectively. This may be indicative of the fact that South Carolina is one of only 10 states that has failed to adopt the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, depriving the state’s health care industry of billions of dollars of federal funds and its residents of a key resource for health care (KFF 2024).1 It is also likely a reason the state is ranked 39th in education quality and 46th in health outcomes for children in the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s 2024 Kids Count Databook. As described in fuller detail later, a large swath of 17 mostly poor, rural counties in South Carolina have been dubbed the state’s “Corridor of Shame” because they have failed to provide students in those counties with even a “minimally adequate” education (Click and Hinshaw 2015; Temoney and Ullrich 2018).

Finally, while the data in Figure E are for nonfarm workers, the South Carolina Farm Bureau (n.d.) reports that agribusiness is actually South Carolina’s largest economic sector, contributing just under $42 billion to the economy and employing more than 200,000 workers. That means agribusiness is about 9% of all employment in the state.2 The largest industry sector within agriculture is poultry processing, production, and other poultry-related products (Von Nessen 2022). Non-poultry meat and beef production are also among the top agricultural sectors .

Black and brown South Carolinians make up a large segment of these workers. Black South Carolinians, for example, make up 26% of the population in the state but are 37.1% of all food production workers and 63.5% of animal slaughter workers. Hispanic workers are just 7.5% of the population but are 11.7% of all food production workers (U.S. Census Bureau 2024a).3

Finally, immigrant workers, including those who are undocumented, make up 11.7% of the food production workforce. In 2023, South Carolina was one of the top five states for H-2A visas—visas that allow migrant workers to come into the U.S. on a temporary basis, often to fill jobs Americans don’t want to do. These workers constitute a pool of labor with few protections, making them easy to exploit (Atkinson 2024).

Job growth was industrially diverse, but geographically concentrated

Although spread across a range of industries, South Carolina’s job growth was highly concentrated in major metropolitan areas. Table 1 shows that of the 174,264 jobs created between January 2020 and December 2023, 89.4% (or more than 155,000) were located in eight metropolitan areas of the state. Most of these jobs were located in just four metro areas: Charleston-North Charleston (45,750), Greenville-Anderson-Greer (38,795), Myrtle Beach-Conway-North Myrtle Beach (25,870), and Columbia (24,961), four of the state’s largest metro areas. The remaining four metro areas received less than 5% of all jobs.

When we consider the distribution of the population, the geographic concentration of this job growth becomes even more stark—and potentially more problematic. More than four in 10 (42.7%) South Carolinians live outside of the top four metro areas that have collectively received more than 77% of all new jobs. More than one in four (25.6%) live outside the eight metro areas shown in Table 1. The uneven distribution of new jobs means that South Carolinians in other areas and those in more rural parts of the state will have less opportunity to benefit from this job growth. One reason is that those outside the major metropolitan areas may not have the same access to information about available new jobs, computers or broadband commonly needed to apply for many jobs, or transportation to reach these jobs. They will also incur greater costs in terms of transportation and commuting time if they are able to fill these jobs.

While South Carolina has experienced strong job growth and the state’s industrial composition has diversified, the state’s per capita gross domestic product (GDP) remains among the lowest in the nation. The GDP per capita is the total value of goods and services produced by the state’s economy, divided by the number of people. GDP grows primarily when the demand for goods and services increases and when government and businesses invest in the state. These might be investments in machinery, technology, or public infrastructure, all of which make workers and businesses more productive. Or they could be investments in workers’ education, training, and compensation, improving workers’ skills and ensuring that they have the resources to afford their basic needs and the ability to balance work and family demands.

Figure G shows the GDP for the U.S. and the 10 states with the lowest per capita GDPs in the nation. Only four states—Alabama, Arkansas, West Virginia, and Mississippi—have a lower GDP than South Carolina.

Workers’ engagement with the labor market across the Palmetto state

The data above show that South Carolina has had strong job growth across industries that have diversified rapidly over the last decade and a half. The state’s low per capita GDP, however, may be an indicator of weakness in the labor market. Below, we examine workers’ engagement with South Carolina’s labor market.

Unemployment

The first indicator we examine is the unemployment rate. The unemployment rate is the share of people in the labor market without a job who are actively looking for work. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the nation and many “non-essential” businesses closed their doors as people isolated in their homes. This led to the COVID-19-induced recession with a dramatic rise in unemployment. Figure H shows that while unemployment rose considerably nationally and in South Carolina, both peaked in April 2020 at 14.8% and 11.8% respectively. These data also show the unemployment rate in South Carolina consistently remained below the national average. As of June 2024, South Carolina had an unemployment rate of 3.6%, up slightly from the 3.2% in April.

The benefits of low unemployment did not extend to all South Carolinians equally. Figure I shows annual unemployment rates for Black and white workers nationally and in the state of South Carolina from 2019 through 2023. Black and white workers in South Carolina have lower rates of unemployment than nationally and the disparities between them are smaller. The unemployment rate for white workers in South Carolina fell below the pre-recession rate by 2023, while Black workers’ unemployment rate was still above pre-recession levels in 2023.

While the annualized data in Figure I show Black unemployment had not dropped below the pre-recession level in 2023, more recent data show that both Black and white unemployment may be increasing—with a much larger increase for Black workers. Figure J shows the unemployment rate for Black, Hispanic, and white workers over the last two quarters of 2023 and the first two quarters of 2024. These data show a slight increase of 0.2 percentage points in unemployment for white workers between the first and second quarter of 2024. Black (0.9 percentage points) and Hispanic (0.5 percentage points) South Carolinians have had larger increases.

As of mid-2024, overall unemployment was lower in South Carolina than in the nation as a whole and racial disparities were smaller but substantial. Still, unemployment for Black workers in South Carolina was still above its pre-recession rate, while unemployment for white workers was lower than before the pandemic.

Employment as a share of the population

Rapid job growth across the state and low levels of unemployment may indicate that South Carolina’s economy is strong, but data on employment rates challenge this notion. Figure K shows the employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) for prime-age workers (ages 25–54) in both 2019 and 2023. We exclude workers younger than 25 and older than 54 because many of these younger workers may be out of the labor force completing their education or gaining additional skills and some workers 55 and older may have retired early.

These data show that in 2019, before the pandemic, there was little difference in the EPOPs for South Carolina and the South more broadly at 78.8% and 79.0% respectively. The EPOP nationally was higher at 80%. From 2019 to 2023, the employment rate among prime-age workers rose from 80.0% to 80.7% nationally and from 79.0% to 79.8% in the South. In South Carolina, however, it remained essentially flat falling from 78.8% to 78.7%, widening the gap with the broader region and the nation. In 2019, South Carolina’s prime-age employment rate was 39th out of 50 states plus D.C.; by 2023, it had fallen to 42nd.

When we examine prime-age EPOPs by race and ethnicity, the data show significant disparities. Figure L shows prime-age EPOPs by race, ethnicity, and gender for South Carolina and the nation. These data show that across racial and ethnic groups, women are less likely to be employed—with the lowest employment rate among Hispanic women (61.1%), followed by Black women (73.9%). White women have the highest employment among South Carolina’s women (76.7%) but still lag behind women nationally.

These data also show that most groups of workers in South Carolina—white men, white women, Black women, and Hispanic women in particular—are less likely to be employed than their counterparts nationally.4 In contrast, Black and Hispanic men in the state are just slightly more likely to be employed compared with their counterparts nationally.

These data in the context of strong job growth and low unemployment rates in the state suggest that many South Carolinians experience significant barriers to employment. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (2024) tracks the number of unemployed people—those looking for a job—compared with the number of job openings in their Job Openings and Labor Turnover survey (JOLTS). This ratio in South Carolina was 0.5 in May 2024. This means that there were twice as many job openings as there were people looking for a job. In the following sections, we discuss some of the likely barriers keeping would-be workers out of the labor market.

Despite job growth exceeding national rates, a lack of worker power means the strong labor market fails to translate into wage growth for workers

Wages and economic insecurity

One likely reason that many jobless South Carolinians are not actively looking for work is poor job quality (Millan Chicago LLC 2022). In other words, the available jobs do not provide adequate wages for workers to support themselves and their families and lack basic benefits, such as paid sick leave or paid family and medical leave. As discussed above, poor job quality has long been a fixture of South Carolina’s economy.

First, many working South Carolinians are paid exceptionally low wages. Figure M shows the share of workers that are paid less than $15 per hour nationally, across the South and in South Carolina. These data show that 18.5% of South Carolinians (almost one in five) are paid less than $15 per hour compared with 15% across the South and 12% nationally.

Figure N shows the median wage—i.e., the wage of a worker paid more than 50% of all other workers in the economy and less than the other half—for workers nationally, across the South, and for South Carolina in 2019 and 2023 (in constant 2023 dollars). While the South generally has lower wages than other regions of the country, these data show that in 2023, middle-class workers in South Carolina were paid even less than their peers in the region—$22.46 per hour compared with $22.57. When compared with workers’ wages nationally, the typical (median) South Carolina worker was paid considerably less—$1.52 less per hour.

These data also show that while wages have risen for workers across each geography since 2019, workers in South Carolina saw the smallest increase. The typical worker in South Carolina saw their wages rise by just $0.17 (0.8%) per hour over the four-year period, despite exceptionally strong job growth and many employers reporting they were unable to find enough workers (Bivens 2024; Green 2023). Workers across the South saw a larger increase of $0.39 (1.8%), but workers nationally saw an increase more than five times greater than in South Carolina at $0.87 (3.8%) per hour.

It is particularly remarkable that even as South Carolina’s job growth outpaced the rest of the region and the country, overall wage growth in the state remained tepid. This underscores how unbalanced South Carolina labor market is, and how policies have stacked the deck against the state’s workers.

Raising wages would strengthen the state’s economy and bring workers back into the labor market. A key reason that wages are lower in South Carolina is that it does not have a state minimum wage. This means that for most workers in South Carolina (and the other four states without a minimum wage5) the federal minimum of $7.25 applies.6 And those not covered by the federal minimum wage can be paid even less. The lack of a suitable floor on wages means that workers in the state can have some of the lowest wages in the country, holding down wages for workers higher up the wage scale. An analysis by the Economic Policy Institute showed that raising the minimum wage to $17 would lift the wages of 584,000 workers in South Carolina alone, including 220,000 workers who would be earning above the minimum (Zipperer 2023).7

Voters and lawmakers in most states have recognized that a $7.25 minimum wage is too low for workers to support themselves and their families, which is why more than half of all states have set their minimum wage above the federal minimum. The failure to make any effort to raise the lowest wages in South Carolina reflects state lawmakers embracing the Southern economic development model that relies heavily on low wages for workers (Childers 2024a).

The largest occupations in the state pay low wages, particularly to Black workers

As noted above, many states outside the South where wages are considerably higher have raised their state’s minimum wage. In South Carolina, not only has the state not raised its minimum wage, but state lawmakers have enacted abusive preemption laws that prevent localities within the state from doing so (EPI 2024a). Below we examine what this means for workers in some of the most common occupations in the state.

Table 4 shows the 15 largest occupations in the state, the number of workers in the occupation, and earnings of workers at the 25th percentile and the median. The workers in just these 15 occupations make up 31% of all workers in the state. They fill crucial roles in the state’s economy, including caring for the sick and elderly; ensuring the fast-growing trade, transportation, and utilities sector continues to be strong; and making sure the hospitality industry (so crucial to South Carolina’s economy) is thriving.

At $20.30, the median wage among all workers in South Carolina is too low to provide a full-time, year-round worker with enough income to meet their most basic needs in any metropolitan area in the state for which we have data.8 And most of the workers represented in these top 15 occupations are paid much less. Waiters and waitresses are paid just $8.98, fast-food and counter workers are paid just $12.40, cashiers are paid $12.69, and retail salespersons are paid just $13.89 per hour.

Because the median is often used to represent the typical worker in an occupation, there is a tendency to overlook the even more dire struggles of the half of workers in low-wage jobs that are paid less than the median. These data highlight the need to account for the variation in wages within occupations. For example, the largest occupation in Table 4 is “retail salespersons” who were paid a median wage of $13.89 per hour (or $28,900 annually) for someone working full time, year-round. This would leave a two-parent family with two children and both parents working full time unable to live a modest yet adequate lifestyle (EPI 2024c). Because half of retail salespeople are paid less than the median, they will struggle even more to provide for their families. For example, retail salespeople at the 25th percentile are paid just $11.15 per hour or $23,190 annually—$5,710 less than workers at the median.

Looking at the racial makeup of workers in these occupations also shows that low wages also reinforce racial inequality. Table 5 shows the racial composition of workers across the 15 largest occupations in the state. While workers across racial and ethnic backgrounds are represented in all 15 occupations shown, the jobs that pay the most are filled primarily by white South Carolinians, while Black South Carolinians are overrepresented in lower-wage jobs. Black workers make up almost a quarter of the workforce—24.9% of all workers—but they are seriously overrepresented among home health and personal care aides (57.7%), miscellaneous assemblers and fabricators (52.3%), laborers and freight, stock, and material movers, hand (42.2%), and cashiers (36.5%). They are underrepresented however, among general and operations managers who are 77.3% white workers and registered nurses who are 79.4% white.

Now is the time for state lawmakers and employers to reconsider compensation policies and break from historically all-too-common practices that exploit workers. Figure P shows the 20 occupations projected to add the largest numbers of new jobs by 2032. Many of these are low-wage jobs that make up the largest occupations in the state today. Of the 20, less than half have hourly pay rates at or above the $20.30 median for all workers. None of the top five occupations pay at or above this rate despite constituting the vast majority of new jobs—45.5% of the 20 occupations projected to add the largest numbers of new jobs by 2032 and 18.3% of all projected new jobs.

All workers, independent of race, gender, or other characteristics, should have sufficient earnings to allow them to purchase food, housing, transportation, and all the other items that support a basic standard of living and help fuel the state’s economy. When large segments of the population cannot afford to buy basic necessities, consumer demand is reduced, shrinking the pool of potential customers that businesses need to buy their goods and services. Further, inadequate pay can make it difficult for many people to remain fully attached to the workforce. For instance, if someone cannot afford child care or a car payment, they may opt to stay out of the formal workforce or may be forced to work sporadically or only part time. This only further weakens the state’s long-term growth if large segments of the potential workforce are not fully participating in the labor market.

Jobs in South Carolina lack many basic workplace benefits

Workers across the state not only face low wages but they are also less likely than workers nationally to have access to key workplace benefits, such as paid family leave. In 70% of households with children across the state, all parents are in the labor market (National Partnership 2023b). A lack of paid family leave coverage forces workers to lose income if they take time off to welcome a child into their family, to care for an elder parent, or to receive care themselves for an extended period. In many cases, it can mean losing their jobs or opting to stay out of the workforce. According to data from the National Partnership for Women and Families (2023b), about 1.9 million workers in South Carolina, or 78% of the state workforce, do not have access to paid family and medical leave. They estimate that if women in South Carolina participated in the labor market at the same rate as women in countries that do have paid family leave, there would be an additional 82,000 people working in the state.

Workers across South Carolina are also less likely to have paid sick leave, another key workplace benefit. Paid sick leave ensures workers can take time off from work if they or a family member are sick or injured. Since South Carolina does not have a law requiring paid sick leave, it is up to employers to decide whether to offer this benefit to their workers. Many employers choose not to do so and, predictably, access to paid sick leave in South Carolina is lower than the national average. While nationally almost 78% of workers have paid sick leave, just 67% do in South Carolina (Mehta and Milli 2023). Worse, employers of low-wage workers—the very workers least able to afford to lose any income—are much less likely to have access to paid time off (Gould and Wething 2023). This is not just a hardship for workers and families, it also endangers public health when workers go to work sick or must send their children to school or daycare when they are ill.

Poor job quality is a product of policymakers’ decisions that have disempowered workers

One key reason that job quality is lower in South Carolina and much of the South is the lack of worker power. Employers are only able to retain staff despite low wages and poor job quality when employees lack the bargaining power to demand better working conditions or to find a new job. As noted, lawmakers in South Carolina—and in many other Southern states—have advanced an economic development strategy designed to keep wages low, limit regulations on corporations, and not require worker benefits or supports, such as employer-provided health insurance or paid leave. This allows lawmakers to advertise their state as “business friendly” to lure businesses into the state (Childers 2024a). A key feature of this strategy is to prevent and undermine workers’ ability to join together with their coworkers in unions. Unions are one of the most powerful means for workers to negotiate better wages and benefits. In fact, one of the best indicators of job quality is whether workers are unionized.

Unionized workers have higher wages; are more likely to have employer-provided health care, paid sick leave, paid family and medical leave; and they experience less inequality compared with nonunion workers (Banerjee et al. 2021). Many employers therefore oppose workers’ efforts to form a union, frequently with the help of lawmakers. For instance, South Carolina is one of 25 states in which lawmakers have passed a deceptively named right-to-work law. These laws do not guarantee workers a job; rather, they make it more difficult for workers to form and maintain unions by limiting collective bargaining rights. RTW laws emerged in the 1940s as a means of preventing workers from joining together in solidarity, especially across racial lines.

Given how central slavery and racial division were to South Carolina’s history, the state’s fierce opposition to unions may be viewed as just one more part of that legacy. Figure Q shows that South Carolina has the lowest union coverage rate of any U.S. state—meaning that a smaller share of the state’s workers is covered by a union contract than in any other state in the country.9

Another factor in lower rates of unionization is the composition of the jobs across the state. As we show above, many of the largest occupations in the state—retail salesperson, fast-food and counter workers, cashiers, home health and personal care aides—are occupations that have traditionally been more difficult to organize for several reasons, including high turnover rates among workers and workers being spread out across different employment sites. Moreover, some of the largest industries in South Carolina are those in which workers lack collective bargaining rights under federal labor law. Agricultural workers, domestic workers, and state and local public-sector workers are explicitly omitted from federal labor laws, leaving legal protections for these workers up to states. Unlike most states—which have enacted policies extending some form of collective bargaining rights to public employees—South Carolina law explicitly declares collective bargaining illegal for all state and local government workers (CLJE 2024, 10).

Even for those workers who are protected by federal labor law, trying to form a union is an incredibly difficult undertaking. Employers nationwide collectively spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year to dissuade workers from exercising their right to form a union. And many employers willfully violate workers’ rights to organize and form a union knowing they will face minimal, if any, repercussions (McNicholas et al. 2019; Shierholz et al. 2024).

Still, workers across the South are working to overcome these barriers to organize in new ways. For example, the Union of Southern Service Workers (USSW) organizes across workplaces in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia. The federal funding from the BIL, IRA, and the CHIPS Act is leading to rapid growth in industries such as manufacturing, especially auto manufacturing. New public and private investments promise to create good jobs that are providing potential new leverage for organizing. Labor, faith, and community coalitions are forming to try to take advantage of this opportunity to make sure that they and their communities also benefit from these investments and not just wealthy corporations, many of which are foreign companies (AFL-CIO 2019). 

Unless wages are raised and workers have stronger leverage to fight for better wages and benefits, current economic and racial inequalities will be reinforced and deepened in the future. Not only will this impact workers directly, but it also has implications for their families, broader communities, and the overall economy.

Low wages, paltry benefits, and a lack of public supports leaves many South Carolinians in poverty

Perhaps the most commonly used measure of economic well-being is the official poverty rate. An individual or family is considered in poverty if their total personal or family income falls below the federal poverty threshold for their family’s size and composition. For example, in 2023, a family with two parents and two children had a poverty threshold of $30,900 (U.S. Census Bureau 2024c). A family with income below this amount would be considered in poverty—a level of income below which most, if not all, families would struggle to meet their families’ basic needs.

In South Carolina, 13.9% of the population falls below the poverty line. This is higher than the poverty rate in the South (13.5%) and the U.S. as a whole (12.5%). South Carolina’s poverty rate in 2023 was the 12th highest in the country. The state also has a substantially higher child poverty rate than the nation at 19.1% compared with 16.0% nationally.10 Its child poverty rate is the 10th highest in the nation.

There is particularly acute racial inequity among those facing poverty in South Carolina. Like the country as a whole, the poverty rate for Black and Hispanic South Carolinians is markedly higher than the poverty rate for white South Carolinians. Table 6 shows that in both South Carolina and nationally, the poverty rate among non-Hispanic white people in 2023 was 9.4%. Nationally, the poverty rate among Black people was more than twice that at 20.8%, while Hispanic poverty was slightly less than double at 16.6%. In South Carolina, however, both the Black and Hispanic poverty rates were markedly higher, at 23.0% and 22.0% respectively. Notably, the Black poverty rate in South Carolina is much higher than both the national rate and the poverty rate for Black people in the South as a whole (which is actually lower than the national rate).

With lower earnings and high poverty rates across the state, the average family in South Carolina has a family income that is well below what would be needed to attain an adequate yet modest standard of living. EPI’s (2024c) Family Budget Calculator estimates metro- and county-specific costs for families based on the number of parents (1 or 2) and presence of and number of children (up to 4) for all counties and metro areas in the United States. It includes the cost of housing, transportation, food, health care, child care, and taxes. This provides a more accurate and complete measure of economic security than the federal poverty measure.

Figure S shows the family income a typical two-parent household with two children would need to cover the basics in seven of South Carolina’s major metropolitan areas along with the median family income in those metro areas. The data show that in no metropolitan area for which we have data is the typical family income at a level that meets the needs of families. The metro area where the median family income comes closest is the Charleston-North Charleston Metro, with much larger gaps in other metro areas.

The prevalence of low incomes in the state means that many South Carolina families struggle to afford basic necessities and likely face considerable hardship caring for themselves and their families; enjoying whatever leisure time they may have; and trying to find and maintain regular employment. For low-income families, any economic shock—such as an unexpected medical bill or car repair—can be all it takes for them to be put into default, be evicted from their home, face repossession on a vehicle, among many other potential challenges that can lead them deeper into economic despair. In the following sections, we examine how housing, transportation, and food insecurity represent additional challenges for many low-income South Carolinians.

Low incomes and inadequate public investment make it hard for families to afford the basics

Housing security

Without housing, everything else falls apart.
– Rev. Jason W. Myers, Director, Chester Worker Empowerment Center

Housing is a basic need that is fundamental to achieving economic security. Reliable, safe, and affordable housing increases the ability of people to participate in the labor market, apply for jobs, and maintain employment once they have a job. When people lack reliable housing, they are less able to focus on finding a job since their attention and energy will often be focused on securing a place to sleep. Further, reliable housing increases the likelihood they will have access to the technology to search for and apply for a job. The process of applying for jobs requires applicants have a fixed address in addition to a current phone number and email address to send and receive communications with potential employers. Finally, having reliable housing further increases the likelihood that workers are ready to work, rested, in appropriate attire, and able to focus on skill development.

Unfortunately, many South Carolinians—especially those who rent—are housing insecure. Compared with the South and the U.S., South Carolina homeowners spend a slightly smaller share of their household income on the monthly costs of homeownership (19.6% of homeowners spend 35% of monthly household income on these costs, compared with 20.8% in the South and 21.3% in the U.S.; U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2022a). However, renters in South Carolina are more likely to be cost burdened.

There are over 150,000 households in South Carolina designated as extremely low income (below the poverty line or 30% of the area’s median income), and nearly three-quarters (73%) of those households are severely cost burdened, meaning they spend more than half of their income on housing. There is a shortage of nearly 90,000 rental homes available and affordable to extremely low-income renters (NLIHC n.d.). Beyond being unaffordable and in short supply, the existing housing stock in many low-income areas is substandard or even dangerous. For example, advocates in Chester County reported that a natural disaster relief organization came to Chester in 2017 and returned in 2018. They stepped in to demolish and rebuild houses that were in severe disrepair. Advocates noted that some families were living in homes with no running water and one family was living in a house that had been knocked off its foundation.14

Transportation access

Lack of transportation is another major barrier for many workers across the state, especially when jobs are not in areas where job seekers are located. Not all counties or all parts of all counties have access to public transportation, according to the South Carolina Department of Transportation annual report (SCDOT 2024). South Carolina ranks 49th in the nation (ahead of only Alabama) for public transit usage in terms of the annual average number of miles per resident traveled via public transit. South Carolina’s largest public transit systems, measured in passenger trips, are the Charleston Area Regional Transportation Authority (2,142,165 trips in 2023) and the Central Midlands Regional Transportation Authority (1,725,176 trips in 2023). All other bus systems in the state provide fewer than 100,000 trips per year (FTA 2024).

Lack of transportation was one of the top reasons given for not having a job in a survey conducted by the South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce (Millan Chicago LLC 2022). The report indicates that the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) is providing substantial dollars for public transit. If this results in more low-cost, accessible public transportation that allows workers without private transportation to connect with available jobs, it could not only increase employment and economic security for many South Carolinians, but it will also likely make it easier for businesses to recruit workers.

Lacking adequate public transit options, many South Carolinian workers drive to work and they too face substantial challenges, including long commute times on dangerous and failing roads. According to a 2024 report, 41% of South Carolina’s major roads are in “poor or mediocre condition,” costing drivers $2.8 billion a year in repairs, vehicle depreciation, and increased fuel consumption. Fortunately, the 2021 federal IIJA is expected to provide $5 billion in state funds for highway and bridge improvement in South Carolina. As of mid-2024, federal funds supported over half (56%) of the state’s spending on such improvements (TRIP 2024a).

South Carolina has some of the deadliest roads of any state15 and its roads have gotten more dangerous over time. In 2023, the state’s traffic fatality rate was 1.7 fatalities per million vehicle miles traveled (compared with 1.26 in the U.S.) and 1,028 people were killed, a 34% increase since 2013 (TRIP 2024c). Rural roads are particularly deadly, and South Carolina’s fatality rate on rural roads is also the highest in the nation (TRIP 2024b).

Food insecurity

Over 300,000 households in South Carolina (14.4% of households in the state) are unable to acquire adequate food due to limited resources. South Carolina is one of only seven states where food insecurity is higher than the national average, and it is one of only six states where the prevalence of very low food security is higher than average.16 Very low food security is a severe form of food insecurity in which one or more household members are forced to eat less because of limited resources. South Carolina was the only state in the nation to see statistically significant increases in very low food security from 2013 to 2023, while these rates declined in 18 states (Rabbit et al. 2024).17 South Carolina has the fourth highest share of free lunch-eligible children18—70% of the state’s K-12 students relied on free schools meals during the 2022–2023 school year (ED NCES 2024).

Despite high rates of food insecurity, including among children, South Carolina lawmakers have not invested in policy solutions to address hunger. In fact, two Republicans cosponsored a 2023 federal House bill to expand the already harsh work requirements of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).19 The bill would put SNAP benefits at risk for 30% of households participating in the program, one of the highest state participation rates in the nation (Bolen, Rosenbaum, and Nchako 2023). And Governor McMaster opted out of the 2024 Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer program, which would have given eligible families food vouchers to use during the summer break when students do not receive free lunch (Brams and James 2024). These provide further examples of how lack of public investment makes it more difficult for families to meet their basic needs.

Conclusion

South Carolina has a long history of exploitative labor practices extending back to before it was even a state with the first enslaved African arriving in 1526 (Brockell 2019). The state’s labor policies and practices today are, in many ways, a direct extension of that same strategy to extract labor at the lowest possible cost while keeping workers disempowered. It is this model that has meant that despite South Carolina’s economy experiencing exceptional job growth during and after the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic with employers struggling to find workers, wages remain low and show less growth than wages across the South or the nation.

Compounding the challenges facing workers in South Carolina, recent job growth has been distributed unequally across the state. Many employers fail to provide workplace benefits, such as paid leave, that might allow or encourage more working parents and caregivers to fully participate in the workforce. Many South Carolinians lack access to safe, reliable, affordable transportation that might give them access to these job centers. For all these reasons, a substantial share of the prime-age South Carolina population is not participating in the labor market at all.

Many South Carolinians, especially children and Black and brown residents, are experiencing high rates of poverty and overall economic insecurity.

Policymakers across the state have the opportunity to shift directions. Instead of continuing to embrace anti-worker policies, they can begin to adopt pro-worker policies that will allow South Carolinians broadly to share in the prosperity their labor creates. This could begin with state lawmakers implementing a minimum wage for the state that is truly a living wage. This would be a first step toward ensuring that all jobs in the state are good jobs.

State lawmakers could also embrace the job quality levers built into the BIL, IRA, and CHIPS bills. For instance, lawmakers could require that workers on federally funded projects are paid prevailing wages—setting a wage floor for workers—and that new infrastructure and manufacturing facilities are built using project labor agreements.

State lawmakers could further ensure that large employers benefiting from federal and state public subsidies enter community benefits agreements (CBAs), legally binding agreements between community coalitions that can include labor organizations, racial justice groups, environmental advocates, government agencies, and developers and contractors (Reimagine Appalachia n.d.). These commitments range from hiring local workers, paying prevailing wages, and ensuring minimum benefits and safety standards for workers. They can also include agreements on land use and contributions to affordable housing and child care. These agreements help ensure that workers, their families, and their communities also benefit from the public tax dollars spent to build up infrastructure, like roads and bridges.

State lawmakers could also ensure workers have access to basic benefits that would allow them to balance work and family demands. Paid family and medical leave, for example, has been shown to have significant benefits for families including increasing their economic security and overall better health outcomes (National Partnership 2023a). But this also benefits employers because access to state paid leave programs have been shown to reduce turnover among workers and it makes participation less expensive for small businesses (Corley 2016; National Partnership 2023a). Thus, this should be a priority for lawmakers concerned about labor force participation and who care about healthy families.

State lawmakers can also respect workers’ right to unionize. As discussed above, workers joining together with their coworkers in a union gives them better bargaining power with their employers and a stronger voice in their workplace. Workers who are unionized have higher wages, smaller wage gaps, and are more likely to have benefits such as health insurance, retirement benefits, and paid leave.

Finally, South Carolina, along with many states across the South, have passed preemption laws at the state level that prevent cities, counties, and other local entities from raising standards for workers and families in their communities. Some of the specific labor standards that have been preempted in South Carolina are raising the minimum wage, establishing a paid family leave program, regulating wages and working conditions for so-called gig workers, and preventing the requirement of project labor agreements when private businesses receive public dollars.

Because local governments are also an important force in economic development, they should use their leverage to encourage things like CBAs where they can (Gerstein and Gong 2024). Where they are preempted, however, their ability to contribute to overall economic development is hindered. State lawmakers should therefore rescind the preemptions, giving local communities the opportunity to pass laws that respond to their needs.

Together, these policies would improve workers lives by raising wages and help ensure their hard work allows them to provide for themselves and their families, to balance the demands of work and family, and give them a voice on their jobs. These policies would give local communities within South Carolina more control and raise standards for families and broader communities across the state.

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Notes

1. The Affordable Care Act expanded Medicaid coverage to most adults with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty level. To date, 40 states and D.C. have adopted the Medicaid expansion. The 10 states that have failed to adopt the Medicaid expansion are Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming (KFF 2024).

2. Dividing 200,000 jobs by the 2,279,240 jobs in the state would produce an estimate of 8.8% of all jobs in the state. The total number of jobs shown in Table 1 assumes that all farm workers are included in the total number of jobs in the state. The QCEW data, however, exclude small farms so it is unclear how many of these jobs are represented in these data. If the 200,000 agribusiness jobs are in addition to the jobs shown in Table 1, the total number of jobs would be 2,479,240.

3. EPI analysis of ACS data.. Share of food production workforce and animal slaughter workers based on EPI analysis of the 2017–2019, 2021–2023 one-year American Community Survey. Sample sizes too small to estimate racial and ethnic composition of other food production occupations such as crop production. 

4. The exceptionally large discrepancy between Hispanic women’s employment rate in South Carolina compared with their national employment rate deserves greater attention than is possible in this report and it should be explored in future research.

5. The remaining states without state minimum wage laws are Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee. While Georgia and Wyoming have minimum wage laws, their minimum wages are lower than the federal minimum wage, so the federal minimum wage applies.

6. There are exceptions that allow some workers to be paid less than the $7.25 federal minimum wage. Some groups covered by these exceptions include tipped workers, workers with disabilities, some youth workers, and seasonal or agricultural workers. However, when a state law requires a higher minimum wage than federal law, the state law would apply (DOL n.d.).

7. They would get a raise as employers adjust pay scales to reflect the new minimum.

8. Median hourly earnings in Table 4 differ from that in Figure N because they are taken from a different source, which allows us to examine earnings across detailed occupations. Earnings for detailed occupations should be compared only with overall median earnings in Table 4.

9. Union density, the share of South Carolina workers who belong to a union, is even lower at 2.3% (EPI analysis of Current Population Survey.)

10. ACS 2023 one-year estimates.

11. The unofficially defined counties include Bamberg, Beaufort, Calhoun, Clarendon, Colleton, Darlington, Dillon, Dorchester, Florence, Hampton, Jasper, Lee, Marion, Marlboro, Orangeburg, Sumter, and Williamsburg.

12. Bamberg (60.6%), Clarendon (45.6%), Darlington (41%), Dillon (46.4%), Florence (42.8%), Hampton (52.7%), Lee (62.9%), Marion (56.3%), Marlboro (49.4%), Orangeburg (61.5%), Sumter (45.9%), and Williamsburg (63.6%).

13. According to Click and Hinshaw (2015), the high court returned the case to the circuit court in 1999 and reduced the number of plaintiff districts to eight—Allendale, Dillon 4 (previously Dillon 2), Florence 4, Hampton 2, Jasper, Lee, Marion 7 and Orangeburg 3.

14. The source is a discussion with advocates from South Carolina who helped inform this report. These advocates included Rev. Jason W. Myers, Director, Chester Worker Empowerment Center and Leslie Brakefield, among others from the local community.

15. As measured by traffic fatalities per vehicle mile traveled.

16. Statistically significantly higher.

17. Data cover three-year period such that 2013 data include data from 2011–2013 and 2023 data include data from 2021–2023.

18. After Mississippi, Nevada, and New Mexico.

19. H.R. 1581.

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