Charleston County had the lowest unemployment rate of South Carolina’s 46 counties in August, but the region’s job growth has fallen behind the rest of the state.
The county’s rate was 3.5%, up from 3.4% in July and down from 4% a year earlier, according to figures the S.C. Department of Employment and Workforce released Sept. 18. County and metro rates are not seasonally adjusted. Berkeley and Dorchester counties were each at 3.9%.
The Charleston-North Charleston metro area, which covers all three counties, held at 3.7%, down half a point from August 2025, the agency said.
Employers in the metro area had 435,700 nonfarm jobs in August on a seasonally adjusted basis, 100 more than in July and 4,000 more than a year earlier. That 0.9% annual gain trailed the statewide pace of 1.6% and the gains in the Greenville, Spartanburg and Myrtle Beach metro areas, according to the agency.
Statewide, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell to 4.1% in August, its sixth straight monthly decline, matching the national rate, agency Executive Director William Floyd said in a statement. Nationally, the rate edged up to 4.2% in September as employers added 29,000 jobs, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Oct. 2.
Pay is rising faster in Charleston County than anywhere else among South Carolina’s largest counties. The county’s average weekly wage was $1,492 in the first quarter of 2026, up 5.7% from a year earlier, according to BLS data released Sept. 2. Both the level and the gain were the highest among the state’s seven largest counties. The statewide average was $1,296, and the national average was $1,654.
Charleston County employment rose 1.3% to 285,447 between March 2025 and March 2026, also the biggest increase among those seven counties, BLS said. That ranked 37th among the nation’s largest counties.
BLS is scheduled to release September figures for states on Oct. 20 and for metro areas on Oct. 28.
