Despite being criticized that the federal unemployment ban doesn’t give the wanted results, the unemployment rate in South Carolina drops to just 4,5$

South Carolina – Numerous states have been facing workers shortage issues and some of the governors, especially GOP led states, have blamed the federal unemployment benefits to be the reason for the workers shortage.

In numerous occasions we have reported that many local businesses especially in the hospitality industry are having problems to find workers leading them to cut the working hours and even close their stores, restaurants and hotels.

South Carolina was among the two dozen GOP led states that decided to cut the federal unemployment benefits in June, months earlier than their expiry date in September in order to fight the workers shortage.

These efforts didn’t result with the needed numbers on a short-term basis, but the latest data shows that the unemployment rate in the state fell, now reaching 4,5%. This has been a record low since the start of the pandemic.

The Labor Department says, nationwide, applications for unemployment aid have fallen by about 550,000 since January.

The unemployment rate has been decently going down since January 2021, but the trend was enforced with the cut of the federal unemployment benefits.

The peak rate was recorded last March, just when the health officials announced the Covid-19 pandemic.

Last week, South Carolinians filed just under 1,500 unemployment applications with over 2,000,000 people in the state working.

Although experts claim this was led by multiple reasons, majority of them agree that the rate is falling because the economy is recovering better than expected and banning the federal benefits which forced unemployed looking for job.

The latest study shows that remote workers are happy to keep their “working from home” policies despite the fact that some companies are already pushing for “in-person” working like the pre-pandemic.

Despite the fact that the rate is falling, many Charleston businesses are lacking workers, again, mostly in the hospitality area.

The Charleston Grill, a popular spot in downtown Charleston, had to close its doors for the remainder of August because of a staffing shortage.

Although unemployment numbers have gone down since the start of the pandemic, it’s still not quite as low as it was just two years ago.

In August 2019, the unemployment rate was just 2.4%.