SC Unemployment

South Carolina unemployment statistics are collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is a division of the Department of Labor, one of the Cabinet level offices of the executive branch of the federal government of the United States of America. When the Bureau complies its report on SC unemployment, it looks are economic data from across the state, but specific attention is paid to the SC unemployment levels in and around the major metropolitan areas in the state and near its borders.

The only metropolitan areas that the Bureau uses to inform its report on SC unemployment that are not located entirely inside South Carolina are the Charlotte- Gastonia- Rock Hill metropolitan area, which involves part of North Carolina as well, and the Augusta- Richmond County metropolitan area that involves part of Georgia.

A SC unemployment report is also influenced by metropolitan areas entirely in the state, such as the Anderson metropolitan area, the Charleston – North Charleston- Summerville metropolitan area, the Columbia metropolitan area, the Florence metropolitan area, the Greenville- Mauldin- Easley metropolitan area, the Myrtle Beach – North Myrtle Beach – Conway metropolitan area, the Spartanburg metropolitan area, and the Sumter metropolitan area.

The most recent information on SC unemployment levels indicates that both the SC unemployment rate and the size of the Civilian Workforce was varied wildly over the most recent six month period for which the information is available, March 2010 to August 2010. During this time the SC unemployment rate has swung from 12.2 percent in March to 10.7 percent in July. In the same months the workforce swung from 2 million 173.8 thousand people to 2 million 142.8 thousand people.