Question: “Are there really enough jobs to support all the growth in the Greenville area? It seems like it’s too much to fast.”
Answer: Bryan Grady, labor market information director for the South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce, helped answer this question.
Here’s what he said in an email:
“Based on the current labor market, it may be more important to ask whether Greenville has enough people to support the jobs that are available.
“The county’s unemployment rate for February, as calculated by DEW, is 3.5%, which is very low by historical standards.
“There were nearly 5,000 posted job openings in the county that month, according to Help Wanted OnLine® data from The Conference Board. On this front, DEW has convened the South Carolina Labor Force Participation Task Force to help identify strategies to attract more residents into the workforce.
“Since 2010, Greenville County’s labor force — people who have a job or are actively seeking one—has been slightly less than half of its total population (48.7% in 2020).
“Those not in the labor force largely consist of children, retirees, and stay-at-home parents, but also includes people who might like to work but are unable to do so for a variety of reasons.
“Therefore, on average, for every two people that move to Greenville, there should be at least one job available. Given that the county added 7,430 people per year in the past decade, that would be 3,715 jobs. As noted above, however, this is an oversimplification and could certainly change substantially based on any number of factors.
“Between the 2010 and 2020 decennial censuses, Greenville County added 74,309 residents, an increase of 16.5%. In that same time, according to the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages produced by DEW and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of jobs within the county increased by 39,338, an increase of 17.5%. By that measure, employment in the county is keeping pace.
“Economic development is very dependent on having a supply of housing that is affordable and available to people in all walks of life, from minimum-wage workers to corporate executives. For this to be possible, housing must be abundant.
“Given that the average household size in Greenville County is about two and a half people (2.55, according to the most recent American Community Survey data), there would need to be roughly four new homes constructed for every five new jobs in the county on average.”
Jobs drive housing and we’re definitely seeing job creation causing demand for new housing, said Michael Dey, vice president of government affairs for the Homebuilders Association of Greenville. However, not all housing is necessarily driven by jobs and jobs don’t always drive housing.
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Job creation, along with relocation to the area and new households being created by people already here, are what’s driving the demand for housing in the Greenville area, Dey said.
Right now, there is literally no inventory of houses on the market, Dey said. The multiple listing services shows seven-tenths of a month’s supply, while a normal housing market has three to six months of housing supply, he said.
Do you have a question you want answered? Send it to me at davisal@gannett.com or via mail to Angelia Davis, 32 E. Broad St., Greenville, SC 29601
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