Every year, bean counters at the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in Washington, DC wave a magic wand and “seasonally adjust” employment data across the country. These adjustments invariably generate a better assessment of the workforce from state to state.
This happened again this week, when the BLS published work participation data for fifty states in America.
How was South Carolina? Better than originally expected … but it’s still a long way We will behind the rest of the nation.
The seasonally adjusted labor participation rate in the state of Palmetto for the month of January 2021 was 56.7 percent, according to the revised BLS data. In other words, less than six out of ten Southern Carolinians of working age were part of the state’s workforce at the beginning of the year.
Kentucky only (56.6 percent), Mississippi (56 percent) and West Virginia (55.3 percent) had worse readings than South Carolina. Nationally, participation in the work was 61.4 percent during the month of January.
As anemic as the reading of South Carolina was, it represented an increase of 0.1 percentage points of a reviewed 56.6 percent reading recorded during the month of December 2020. Originally, the reading of December reached a record low of 56.3 percent.
Thanks to seasonal reviews, the real record low was recorded in April 2020 – during the impact of social outages linked to the coronavirus pandemic. At that time, participation in work plummeted until 56.2 percent – the lowest reading since this data set was first published in January 1976.
For those of you who score points at home, a total of 2,360,986 South Carolinians were part of the workforce in January – an increase of 5,924 December people. Meanwhile, the state’s working age population has increased by 5,102 people – for 4,163,639.
Why do we follow labor participation as opposed to the widely observed unemployment rate? Well, unlike the last indicator – which tracks only one segment of workers inside of the workforce – the rate of participation in work accompanies the size of the workforce itself. This makes it a much more accurate indicator of the extent to which people have paid jobs … or not.
Hopefully, we won’t see such a low number again anytime soon … although South Carolina lawmakers have yet to demonstrate anything that resembles an awareness of the kind of reinvented economic development approach needed for the post-Covid scenario.
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As our founding editor Will Folks observed in January, South Carolina’s chronic underperformance on the labor front underscores the need for state lawmakers to enact “competitive tax reform” – specifically reductions in individual income tax rates, as well as reductions in other, more regressive taxes.
Folks further argued that Palmetto State must take steps to diversify its battered tourist economy – and reduce the size, scope and cost of its undisciplined and irresponsible state government.
Are the state’s political and business leaders doing any of these things? No way.
Unfortunately, they are continuing with the same failed capitalist approaches to cronyism in the past … which (shock) are producing more totally unacceptable results. The same goes for the state’s worst “public education” system – which desperately needs real market-based accountability.
In any case, we will have another snapshot of the employment situation in the state next Friday (March 26, 2021), when the BLS releases the work data for the month of February.
-FITSNews
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