SC hits unemployment mark not seen since COVID began. How tri-county area compares.
For the first time since COVID-19 caused unemployment to soar across South Carolina in early 2020, initial claims dipped below where they were before the pandemic hit.
The South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce began weekly updates during the pandemic on initial unemployment claims. That number shows first-time completed claims for unemployment insurance benefits. It’s separate from continued claims, which people still unemployed file after the initial ones.
For the week ending May 29, the state saw 1,972 initial claims.
“This is now the lowest number of new initial claims being filed in South Carolina since the pandemic began,” workforce department spokeswoman Heather Biance said in an email.
The figure is lower than the 1,996 claims filed the week ending March 14, 2020.
The following week, as businesses closed their doors with the threat of coronavirus spread, the state saw a then-unprecedented 31,054 initial claims. Three weeks later, statewide claims would spike at 87,686 in a single week. They’ve been on a somewhat steady decline since.
Still, as recently as April there were weeks with more than twice as many initial claims as there were the last week before the pandemic spike. The 63-week span since the spike saw 898,778 initial claims in South Carolina. It’s an average of more than 14,000 new claims each week.
York, Lancaster and Chester county figures follow a similar trajectory. The tri-county area had almost as many initial claims in the first week of business shutdowns as the entire state did the week prior. York County claims spiked in April 2020 at 3,374 in a week — well above the most recent statewide total for a week.
The most recent week saw 171 initial claims combined across the tri-county area.
Tri-county area by the numbers
In the 63-week span since the surge began, there have been 31,451 initial claims filed in York County. It’s just shy of 500 per week on average, from a low of 64 earlier this month to that April 2020 high of 3,374 claims.
York County has, per U.S. Census Bureau estimates, just fewer than 281,000 residents. Roughly 188,000 of those residents are workforce eligible at 16 years or older. The initial claims total in York County since March 2020 represents about 17% of the current workforce age population.
Lancaster County has seen 10,654 initial claims the past 63 weeks, or about 169 per week. Weekly counts have dipped as low as 27 (multiple times, including twice this month) and ballooned to 1,082 (early April 2020). Lancaster County has about 98,000 residents with more than half of them (almost 55,000 people) of workforce age. Filed claims would make up about 19% of eligible workers.
Chester County saw 5,675 initial claims since March 2020. About 90 claims per week span from 13 earlier this month to an April 2020 high of 611. Chester County has about 32,000 residents, more than 17,000 of them of workforce age. Initial claims filed since March 2020 would be about 33% of the current Chester County workforce.
In 2020 the tri-county area saw unemployment at 6.4%, more than twice the record low of 2.9% in 2019. The April 2021 rate of 4.4% is a fraction of what it was in April 2020, at 10.8%. According to the workforce department, the tri-county area also had more than 6,800 listed job openings in April. More than 5,200 of them were in York County.
Accommodation and food services is the top industry in York County for claim filing as of April, the most recent month listed by the workforce department. Next are administration and support, retail and manufacturing. The top occupations for open jobs are registered nurses, retail sales and customer sales.
Accommodation and food services is both the industry with the most employment claims, and with the most new hires in Lancaster County. Manufacturing, administrative support and wholesale are the top industries producing Chester County claims. The most open jobs are for nurses, retail workers and drivers/material movers while new hires come in manufacturing, transportation and warehousing.
The employment picture has been at times volatile in the past 63 weeks, and again changes will come. Gov. Henry McMaster directed the state to opt out of federal unemployment assistance programs beginning with the week ending June 26. The state will return to pre-pandemic level operations and funding levels.
