All but one Pee Dee county showed a slight increase in unemployment rates in June, according to the S.C. Employment Security Commission’s monthly report released Friday.
Marion County’s unemployment rate showed a slight decrease from its May jobless rate of 21.8 percent. In June, the unemployment rate was 21.6 percent, a decrease of 0.2 of a percentage point.
The county also dropped from the No. 2 position in May to No. 4 in the ranking of unemployment rates by county. Marion County follows Allendale, Union and Chester counties, which were Nos. 1, 2 and 3, respectively.
While Marion County didn’t show an increase, the other Pee Dee counties’ unemployment rates only increased slightly ranging from 0.1 percentage points to 1.1 percentage point.
For example, Florence County’s June unemployment rate was 12.1 percent, a 0.7 percentage point increase from its May jobless rate of 11.4 percent.
The county is ranked No. 32 in the state for unemployment and has the lowest unemployment rate in the Pee Dee.
At No. 5, Marlboro County tied with Barnwell County coming in with an unemployment rate of 19.7 percent. Marlboro’s rate increased a tenth of a percentage point from May.
With a 18.1 percent unemployment rate, Chesterfield County comes in at No. 9 in the state. Chesterfield had the highest increase out of the Pee Dee counties with an increase of 1.1 percent from May.
Dillon, Williamsburg and Darlington counties all showed an increase of 0.8 percentage points from rates recorded in May.
Dillon County, which is ranked No. 13 in the state, has an unemployment rate of 17.4 percent in June compared to a rate of 16.6 percent in May.
In Williamsburg County, the unemployment rate increased from 15.6 percent in May to 16.4 percent in June. The county is ranked No. 16 in the state.
Darlington County’s June unemployment rate was 14.4 percent. In May, the county had a rate of 13.6 percent.
The state’s June unemployment rate was 12.1 percent, just slightly above May’s revised rate of 12 percent, according to the report.
Sam McClary, the commission’s senior labor market analyst, said Friday that the unemployment rates will fluctuate for a while.
“We’ve noticed the rates for the last couple of months have sort of leveled off, but based on everything that I’m reading on a national level and (state level) we’re still probably quite a ways from seeing any kind of recovery,” McClary said. “When we’ll reach a bottom, I don’t know but whenever we get there we could stay kind of flat for a while before we begin recovery.”
On the Web
To view the report, visit http://www.sces.org/lmi/news/June_2009.pdf
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