NOTE FROM THE DIRECTOR

Welcome to the March 2023 issue of Trends! Which region do you think has more restaurant workers: Charleston or the Grand Strand? Check out pages 22 and 25 to find out.

I’ve been in this role for more than a year now, and I would love to hear more from the readers of this newsletter Our team has been working hard to expand our offerings and put a fresh coat of paint on what we’ve always done, but ultimately, our job is to serve the people of South Carolina, from those facing economic hardship to our public and corporate leaders We can guess what is useful to you, but we’d do a better job if we knew for sure If you have a question, an idea, or someone that we should get in touch with, please don’t hesitate to reach out Our email address is lmicustomerservice@dew.sc.gov

This month, Taylor Hendrix breaks down results from the Palmetto Business Barometer Since January, we’ve partnered with the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce to collect and analyze insights from our state’s businesses You might be surprised how good they think things are looking, even with all that recession chatter The full results are available on the Chamber’s website at https://tinyurl.com/PBBarometer, and if you own or manage a business, please be sure to click the link and take the survey! The survey is open until May 12 . The more replies we get, the better we know what’s going on

As always, thanks for reading!

Bryan P Grady, Ph .D Assistant Executive Director for Labor Market Information SC Department of Employment and Workforce