Kelli Cox, Manager of Volunteer Services at MUSC of Florence and Matthew Corbin, MUSC Liaison were the Florence Chamber’s guest this past weekend talking about all things volunteer at the MUSC of Florence Medical Centers. We encourage you to tune-in every Sunday from 12:00-12:30pm on LIVE 95.3FM in Florence, SC.

This program is brought to you by the Greater Florence Chamber of Commerce.

You can review past ChamberLink Radio Show interviews by clicking https://www.flochamber.com/events-programs/podcasts/

The Greater Florence Chamber held its fall Community Breakfast on Friday, November 1, as an Education and Workforce Update. The event was held at Florence Center.

The breakfast speakers included Francis Marion University President, Dr. Fred Carter, Florence-Darlington Technical College President, Dr Jermaine Ford and Florence County Economic Development CEO, Gregg Robinson.

Gregg Robinson started the program session with an economic development update and shared the need to continue to develop the area workforce given the dramatic industry expansion here in the Pee Dee.

Dr. Carter and Dr. Ford followed on the workforce topic with impressive statistics on what Francis Marion University and Florence Darlington Technical College have added to their classrooms and educational programming.

This program was made possible by Signature Wealth Strategies and First Reliance Bank.

To see more photos from the event, click here.

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.

Data released this week from the South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce (DEW) for the month of September saw a drop in the total number of South Carolinians working by 1,287 people over the August 2024 estimate, for a total of 2,413,337 workers. However, 18,921 more South Carolinians are employed today relative to this time last year, showing that the state is continuing to experience positive employment growth in a wide variety of sectors, including Construction; Retail Trade; Transportation, Warehousing, and Utilities; and Wholesale Trade.

South Carolina’s labor force participation, people who are working plus those who are unemployed and looking for work, increased to 2,527,319 while the labor force participation rate remained unchanged at 57.6%. This figure marks increases of 4,804 and 60,098 people over the August 2024, and September 2023 data respectively.

Lastly, the estimate of unemployed people in South Carolina increased to 113,982 which includes a significant increase of 6,091 over the August 2024 estimate and an increase of 41,177 over the past year. Consequently, the state’s unemployment rate increased from 4.3% to 4.5% while the national unemployment rate decreased to 4.1%

For more information, click here.

Scrubby’s Car Wash, along with over 3,600 other car wash locations across the nation, will provide FREE car washes to veterans and current military service personnel, under the Grace For Vets FREE Wash Program on November 11th (hours may vary by location). Washes will be given rain or shine at all Location(s). The FREE washes are given to honor and recognize those that have and are serving in the armed forces.

Chase Howard, Co-Owner: “On this day we are proud to honor and celebrate those individuals who have made freedom in America possible. It gives all of us at Scrubby’s Carwash and Chase Oil Company a great deal of pleasure to express our gratitude to these brave men and women. This is our way of saying thank you.”

For more information, click here.