Finding enough workers: State chamber hears concerns at Santee meeting

That was the consensus of opinions when the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce’s annual Grassroots Tour met with about 20 local business leaders at the Santee Conference Center on Thursday, Sept. 15.

The tour crisscrosses the state to meet with “grassroots” business people whose opinions help shape the state chamber’s legislative agenda for the coming year.

The state chamber representatives repeated many of the questions they posed last year, and the answers this year were remarkably similar to last year’s.

For example, the local business people are significantly more optimistic about South Carolina’s economy than the national economy.

Economic data tend to support that perception, said Will Frierson, the state chamber’s vice president of governmental affairs – and a native of Orangeburg.

For the second year in a row, local business people said their biggest challenge is hiring and keeping good employees. Second is coping with inflation.

Frierson said that the labor force participation rate is 63% nationwide but only 57% in South Carolina for the second year in a row.

Some of those people are retirees with pensions who moved here from other states and don’t intend to get a job. But those who are age 64 or younger are still included in the potential labor force pool, Frierson said.

There are 73,000 people drawing South Carolina unemployment benefits while 80,000 jobs are unfilled, he added.

Some potential workers are staying on the “sidelines” because of health issues, disabilities, gaps in employment history, and lack of transportation to and from job sites, Frierson said.

Others may be benefiting from the fact that South Carolina provides up t0 20 weeks of unemployment benefits – more than any other Southeastern state.

For men, a criminal record can be an impediment to getting a job.

For women, the unavailability of affordable child care can be a barrier.

Frierson asked the local business people, if the legislature approved child care credits, would they be willing to pass along those credits to their employees?

All of the local business people who answered the question said “Yes.”

Frierson then explained it was a bit of a trick question, because the state legislature already did that, but only a handful of businesses have signed on.

There were some gasps and open mouths, and one person asked: “Why didn’t we know about this?”

Frierson said the dollar amount of the child care credit falls far short of the average cost of child care. He said the state chamber intends to ask legislators to raise the credit to a meaningful dollar amount.

He noted that electric vehicle owners must pay South Carolina a $120 fee every two years for traffic infrastructure maintenance. That is less money than any other Southeastern state except Florida.

It’s also generally less money than the owner of a gasoline-powered vehicle pays in fuel taxes, Frierson said. Too, electric vehicles tend to weigh more, causing more wear and tear to the pavement, he said. So the chamber might lobby for an increase in the electric vehicle fee.

However, the notion to increase the gasoline tax to pay to widen interstate highways in South Carolina has gotten “a clear ‘no’ across the state,” he said.

Local business leaders expressed concern that public education in South Carolina has improved, but not by enough. Two-thirds of students are reading and doing math below their grade level.

They expressed concern that too few graduating students are prepared to enter the workforce. They said they believe educational quality is the biggest long-term threat to South Carolina’s economic competitiveness.

The local business leaders support:

• Giving employees an hour or two of personal time off to visit schools and read to young children.
• Making it easier for non-teachers to switch careers and become educators. Frierson said that the state’s public schools began the last school year with 1,474 classroom teacher vacancies.
• Expanding telehealth services. That would be possible only by making high-speed broadband Internet service widely available.
• Streamlining the occupational licensing process. Nearly one in five occupations requires a license in South Carolina, Frierson said.
• Limiting the abilities of environmental activists to repeatedly challenge permits for business and industrial development projects in court.

The state chamber will release its full legislative agenda in early January shortly before the General Assembly convenes for its second year of the current two-year session.