SC Chamber Releases 2024 Grassroots Tour Results

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Over the last several months, the SC Chamber embarked on its annual Grassroots Tour to take the pulse of businesses across the Palmetto State on a variety of different economic and political issues. The SC Chamber team visited over 31 local chambers, including the Greater Florence Chamber of Commerce, and collected 792 responses from engaged audiences. Through this interactive presentation, respondents had the opportunity to make their voices heard on challenges affecting their businesses and provide invaluable feedback to help shape the SC Chamber’s 2025 Competitiveness Agenda that will be released prior to the start of the legislative session.

While most of the respondents felt poorly about the United States’ economy (52 percent rated it as bad), an overwhelming majority (83 percent) rated South Carolina’s economy as either good or excellent. Other notable results include:

  • 68 percent of respondents said that their business or organization had to raise prices on their goods or services over the past year to keep up with inflation.
  • 65 percent of respondents said that they are struggling to hire and retain qualified workers, with 28 percent of respondents saying that a lack of workers is the biggest challenge facing their business or organization today.
  • 75 percent of respondents said that they had to raise wages in the past year to retain employees.
  • 88 percent of respondents said that lawsuit reform was either extremely important or somewhat important to their business.
  • 69 percent of respondents support the expansion of natural gas as a means to increase energy generation in the state.
  • 80 percent of respondents think South Carolina’s individual income tax rate is still too high at 6.2%.
  • 43 percent of respondents believe that South Carolina’s K-12 education quality is the biggest long-term threat to the state’s economic competitiveness.

The full 2024 results can be found here.