Where South Carolina's service jobs are: employment by sector and county

South Carolina has 1,228,022 jobs in its service sectors, based on the Census Bureau's County Business Patterns (CBP) for 2023. That is 59.4% of the 2,067,143 employees CBP counts in the state, and about 22.4 service jobs for every 100 residents. The U.S. figure is 25.2 per 100.

Establishment counts and employment tell different stories. Repair and personal services (sector 81) has the most locations, 12,908, but averages 6.7 employees each. Administrative and support services has about half as many locations, 6,895, and averages 44 employees, because the sector includes staffing agencies, call centers, security firms and janitorial companies. For a business deciding where to hire or sell, employment shows where the people are.

Greenville County has the most service jobs in South Carolina, 158,221, followed by Charleston (147,999) and Richland (116,452). Together those three counties hold 40.9% of the service jobs CBP assigns to a county. Add Horry and Spartanburg and the top five hold 54.4%; the top 12 hold 82.3%.

The share of all jobs that are in services also varies. In Beaufort (70%), Richland (69%) and Charleston (65%), services dominate. In Spartanburg (42%) and Anderson (44%), manufacturing and distribution make up more of the job base, so service employment is a smaller slice even where it is large in absolute terms.

Charleston County has 34.3 service jobs per 100 residents, the highest in South Carolina. Florence (29.2), Greenville (27.7) and Richland (27.0) follow. These counties draw workers and customers from well beyond their borders: Florence's 18,519 health care jobs serve much of the Pee Dee region, and Charleston's 36,908 food service and lodging jobs serve visitors as well as residents.

The lowest rates are in small rural counties: Saluda (5.6), Calhoun (5.8), Allendale (6.1), McCormick (6.2), Union (6.5) and Marlboro (6.6). Residents there mostly travel to neighboring counties for care, dining and professional help, and local employers draw from a small labor pool.

Fast-growing suburban counties also run low. Berkeley (10.7) and Dorchester (10.3) have many residents but fewer service jobs per person than Charleston next door, because many of their residents work and shop in Charleston County.

Not always. By number of locations, repair and personal services (salons, auto repair, dry cleaners, pet care and similar) is the most common service sector in 28 of South Carolina's 46 counties. By number of employees, health care leads in 28 counties and food service and lodging in 11. Many small shops make up the business count, while hospitals, clinics and restaurant groups make up the job count.

County rankings shift too. Florence is 11th in the state for service establishments but 9th for service jobs, and Aiken is 12th by locations and 10th by jobs, because both have larger employers. Their service establishments average 20.3 and 16.9 employees. Berkeley moves the other way: 9th by locations but 12th by jobs, with 11.0 employees per establishment.

For a business, this matters when choosing where to recruit. A county with large health systems or hotel groups competes hard for front desk staff, schedulers and billing specialists. A county full of small shops may have more people with customer-facing experience who want a smaller workplace.

Employment data shows where people work during the day, which shapes both hiring and demand. A physical therapy clinic or dental group near a large employment center has a daytime population to serve at lunch or before and after shifts. A salon, auto shop or law office in a county with few local jobs depends on residents who may commute elsewhere and book evenings and weekends.

It also shows who you compete with for staff. In Greenville and Richland, health care employs more than 30,000 people per county, so a private practice hiring a front desk coordinator competes with hospital pay and benefits. Clear schedules, training and tools that remove repetitive tasks help a smaller employer keep good people.

Monvell's Operations team designs scheduling, intake and staffing workflows around the realities of each market, and our Consulting work uses data like this to plan where to hire and expand.

• Check service jobs per 100 residents in your county and the counties next to it to see whether customers come in or go out.
• Find the largest service employer sector in your county; that is who you compete with for staff.
• Match your hours to the local pattern: daytime job centers need early and lunch slots, commuter counties need evenings and weekends.
• Use employees per establishment as a rough guide to how many large employers you are hiring against.

Datasets: U.S. Census Bureau County Business Patterns (CBP) 2023 county file (released June 2025), and Census Population Estimates Vintage 2024 county totals. CBP employment is for the pay period including March 12, 2023.

Definitions: service sectors are NAICS 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 61, 62, 71, 72 and 81. All-industry employment is the CBP total for all sectors.

Method: we summed sector-level employment and establishments for each South Carolina county and for the Census statewide category, then computed each county's share of county-assigned service employment, service jobs per 100 residents (July 1, 2024 population), services as a share of all county employment, and the sector with the most employees and the most establishments in each county. State totals include the statewide category; county shares and rankings exclude it.

Limits: in 2023 CBP publishes employment for every released cell but adds noise for confidentiality. Of the 450 county sector cells we used, 254 carry a low-noise flag (changed by less than 2%), 120 moderate (2% to 5%) and 76 high (5% or more), mostly in small counties. The 194,748 service jobs in the statewide category, 167,388 of them in administrative and support services, are employers without a single fixed county location, such as staffing and employer services firms; they cannot be placed on the county map. CBP excludes most government employees and the self-employed, and counts jobs where people work rather than where they live.