While Spartanburg County, and the Upstate more generally, are experiencing steady population and economic growth, a major nationwide demographic shift is prompting business and elected leaders to take a hard look at labor trends and evaluate new ways of attracting and retaining talent.
Diving into the data behind this trend and presenting strategies for expanding the talent pool is at the heart of OneSpartanburg Inc.’s Talent Gap Analysis 2.0, which was released Oct. 20.
The talent backdrop
The underlying demographic challenge is relatively straightforward: the number of people leaving the workforce nationally through retirement, age and other factors significantly exceeds the number of new workers entering the market to fill job openings.
An additional challenge in a manufacturing-heavy economy like the Upstate — and Spartanburg County in particular — is the increasing necessity for higher technical skills required by things like automation and advanced manufacturing processes.
With those broader trends as backdrop, OneSpartanburg partnered with Lightcast, a leading global labor consultancy firm, starting in 2022 to take a comprehensive look at the labor market in Spartanburg County.
The latest iteration of that work builds on earlier findings and offers several key strategies to strengthen the region’s talent pipeline. Lightcast senior analyst Hunter Hill presented an overview of the report during USC Upstate’s Talent Forum Oct. 21 and identified five key initiatives to support expanding the talent pool:
- College affordability to lower barriers to education and skills development.
- College and career connection to increase exposure of K-12 students to career options and education opportunities.
- Adult degree completions to better align adult education and up-skilling opportunities with critical job openings in the local market.
- Child care and early childhood education to remove one of the major barriers to increased workforce participation.
- Talent marketing and attraction to improve the effectiveness of recruiting critical talent from other regions.
Talent Gap Analysis highlights
In support of the report’s recommendations, Lightcast’s analysts compiled a wealth of data on the region’s labor market and trends and covered in some detail in the analysis.
In discussing some of those findings, Hill said the Upstate is one of the most robust manufacturing regions in the nation.
According to the report, Spartanburg County alone employed more than 37,000 manufacturing workers in 2024 — an 11% increase since 2020. It added that while industrial employment continues to grow, employment in other sectors like warehousing and transportation have fallen during the same period.
The need to engage the unemployed, underemployed and disengaged is another key takeaway revealed by the report. The regional unemployment rate was 4% in 2024, amounting to about 30,000 people without jobs. Fully a third of those were in Greenville County at 10,330, with another 6,656 in Spartanburg County.
The report found that among young workers aged 16 to 19, the unemployment rate in Spartanburg was 13% with Greenville slightly lower. For those aged 20 to 24, Spartanburg’s unemployment rate was 8.1% and only slightly better for those 25 to 29 at 7.1%.
For comparison, the report notes the unemployment rate in Greenville for those 20 to 24 was 7.4% and markedly better at 4.7% for those 25 to 29.
The report notes more needs to be done in Spartanburg to connect young workers with job opportunities through initiatives already under way. Those include the Spartanburg Talent and Retention Fellowship, funded through a grant from Spartanburg Academic Movement in partnership with OneSpartanburg to secure paid internships for rising high school seniors.
Further findings
Among the report’s other suggested action items is the need to increase labor market flexibility. This means encouraging employees to improve soft skills and increase adaptability through lifelong learning. It also means encouraging employers to invest in training and target hiring to better fit the company.
The report also calls for better aligning scholarships with workforce needs and encouraging employers to be more accommodating to part-time workers, especially students and underrepresented groups, by addressing barriers like the lack of childcare and transportation.
In addressing immediate and longer-term labor needs, the report urges expanding efforts to expose K-12 students to career options by making practical connections between what they’re learning in the classroom and the jobs that are available in their communities both now and in the future.
To view the full Talent Gap Analysis 2.0, visit onespartinburginc.com/talentgap.
Talent Gap Analysis 2.0 fast facts
The analysis focuses on four key Spartanburg County employment sectors and, among other things, identifies occupation gaps within those sectors, among them:
- Manufacturing: Assemblers and fabricators, electrical assemblers and machine setters, among others
- Transportation and warehousing: Heavy and tractor-trailer drivers
- Health care and social assistance: Child care workers
- Hospitality: Bartenders, dining room attendants and head cooks, among others
