Labor shortages take its toll, South Carolina businesses face closures due to lack of workers

Charleston, South Carolina – “We’ve actually gone from seven days a week down to six, and we’re about to go down to five days a week,” said Kris Cummings, manager of Zavarella’s on Daniel Island.

Cummings’ business is one of the many in South Carolina facing issues with finding workers leading to lowering the capacity and more days closed. Labor shortages have been an issue for months now across Palmetto State, but apparently Lowcountry area businesses have the most difficulties.

“It’s absolutely restricting revenue,” said David Platte, manager of Butcher and the Boar in Mount Pleasant.

In his case the place is working with less than 50% capacity as he is unable to find workers in the area.

Governor Henry McMaster heard the voice of the businesses and earlier this month said South Carolina will opt out of the monthly federal unemployment benefits hoping this will help SC businesses to find workers. However, not all agree with this.

“His attempt to decrease the labor shortage kind of makes sense. Yeah, lets remove this incentive for people not to work, they’ll go back to work, and everything will get better. I say that with some reservation because the economy is really complicated and often times there’s secondary and tertiary effects that we can’t always anticipate,” said Charleston Southern University, professor of eEconomics, Andrew Hite.

According to him, this will surely increase the number of people who will now have to work, but it can also increase the labor cost as many businesses will compete for workers. He also added that this might increase the prices of many goods, groceries and more.

However, hotel and restaurant owners agree that a solution have to be found and maybe this will help them a little bit on a short-term basis.