The Charleston-North Charleston metro area’s unemployment rate jumped to 12.1% in April, from 2.6% in March, during the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday.
A year earlier, the rate was 2.2%. The April figures are preliminary and not seasonally adjusted.
The bureau counted 47,253 unemployed residents in the three-county metro area in April, out of a labor force of 391,606. In March, 10,180 were unemployed.
It is the highest monthly rate for the area in bureau records that begin in 1990. Before April, the highest rate in those records was 10.1%, in January 2010.
Employers’ payrolls fell just as sharply. The metro area had 328,700 nonfarm jobs in April, down 46,500, or 12.4%, from April 2019, according to the bureau’s survey of employers. That was 42,100 fewer jobs than in March.
South Carolina’s rate was 12.2%, not seasonally adjusted. Among the state’s metro areas, Myrtle Beach was hit hardest, at 21.4%, and its payrolls fell 23.3% from a year earlier. Spartanburg’s rate was 15.2%, Greenville’s 12.3% and Columbia’s 8.6%.
Nationally, the rate was 14.4% on the same basis, up from 3.3% a year earlier.
“Unemployment rates were higher in April than a year earlier in all 389 metropolitan areas,” the bureau said in its release.
Rates ranged from 6.2% in Logan, Utah, to 35% in Kahului-Wailuku-Lahaina, Hawaii. Among the 51 metro areas with at least 1 million people, Las Vegas had the highest rate, 33.5%.
