Tourism seasonality and employment in South Carolina: how much hospitality jobs swing

Tourism seasonality shows up clearly in South Carolina employment data, but it is concentrated on the coast. Statewide, private employment in accommodation and food services (NAICS 72) rose from 233,748 in January 2025 to 256,151 in June 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW). That 22,403-job swing equals 9.1 percent of the year's average employment. Nationally the same measure was 5.8 percent, so South Carolina's hospitality sector is noticeably more seasonal than the country's.

We measure seasonality with a simple index: the gap between the highest and lowest month of the year, divided by the 12-month average. An index of 26 percent means a business would need roughly a quarter more staff at peak than in an average month, and even more compared with the slowest month. The pattern has been stable: the statewide index was 8.9 percent in 2023, 8.2 percent in 2024 and 9.1 percent in 2025, with the peak in June and the low in January each year.

Horry County is the most seasonal large hospitality market in the state, with an index of 26.1 percent in 2025, and its numbers barely move from year to year (26.0 percent in 2023, 25.4 percent in 2024). Georgetown (20.7 percent) and Beaufort (18.5 percent) follow. Colleton, along the I-95 corridor, comes next at 15.0 percent.

Charleston County is the exception on the coast. Its index was 8.1 percent in 2025, below the state average, even though it has more hospitality jobs than Horry. Charleston's restaurants and hotels serve a large resident population, business travel and visitors spread across spring and fall as well as summer. Greenville (6.6 percent), Richland (6.9 percent), Lexington (5.8 percent) and Spartanburg (6.0 percent) are steadier still.

On the Grand Strand, hiring starts in February and accelerates through spring. In 2025, Horry County hospitality employment rose by 757 jobs from January to February, then by 2,072 in March and 2,363 in April, reaching its June peak of 34,948. It held near that level in July, eased in August and fell steadily from September to December, ending the year at 28,476, still above January.

Beaufort County follows the same shape on a smaller scale, peaking in July. Charleston County rises from January to June too, but its curve is flatter: the gap between its best and worst months was 2,954 jobs on an average base of more than 36,000.

Almost entirely staff. The number of hospitality establishments in Horry County barely moves through the year: QCEW counted 1,472 in the first quarter of 2025 and 1,449 in the third. The businesses stay open; they run much larger teams in summer and much leaner ones in winter.

Pay follows the same curve. Horry County hospitality employers paid $194.4 million in total wages in the first quarter of 2025 and $264.7 million in the third, 36 percent more, and the average weekly wage rose from $533 to $610 in the summer quarter. In Beaufort County, quarterly hospitality wages rose from $100.9 million to $122.8 million between the first and third quarters. For a hospitality business this is the real cost of seasonality: the payroll needed at peak is roughly a third larger than in winter, while rent, software and insurance stay the same all year. Statewide, average weekly hospitality wages ran from $490 in the first quarter to $524 in the third.

Hotels and other lodging (NAICS 721) swing more than restaurants and bars (NAICS 722) almost everywhere. Statewide in 2025, lodging employment had an index of 13.7 percent against 8.4 percent for restaurants. In Horry County, lodging ran from 5,703 in February to 7,658 in July (28.9 percent) and restaurants from 21,010 in January to 27,295 in June (25.8 percent). Georgetown's lodging index was 32.8 percent.

Arts, entertainment and recreation (NAICS 71), which covers golf courses, attractions, marinas, fitness centers and amusement parks, is the most seasonal of all at the state level. Its 2025 index was 22.0 percent, with employment rising from 33,757 in January to 42,157 in June. Horry County's recreation index was 30.1 percent. Event venues and caterers are counted inside these broader categories, so the figures are a guide to the market they operate in rather than a direct measure of their own bookings.

Richland and Pickens counties show a pattern the coast does not: hospitality employment dips in summer. In Richland County, home to the University of South Carolina, the 2025 low was July and the high was November. In Pickens County, home to Clemson University, employment peaked in April and fell to its low in July, in both 2024 and 2025. The timing is consistent with a student population that leaves for the summer and with fall football weekends.

Businesses in college towns plan the reverse of a beach business. Summer is the time for maintenance, training and marketing to residents, and late summer is when staffing needs to ramp up.

Seasonality sets the calendar for hiring, training, marketing and cash flow. Monvell's operations and marketing work helps hospitality and event businesses plan around it, with scheduling tools that scale up and down, and off-season campaigns aimed at locals and repeat customers.

• Hire before the curve. On the Grand Strand the steepest staffing increases come in March and April, so recruiting and onboarding need to start in January and February.
• Budget for the gap. A 26 percent swing means payroll, scheduling and supply orders cannot be set once a year; plan peak, shoulder and off-season versions.
• Market against the season. Off-season months are when resident customers, corporate events, rehearsal dinners and local catering can fill capacity, and they need their own campaigns and follow-up.
• Know your local pattern. Charleston and the Upstate are steady, college towns dip in summer, and the beach counties peak in June and July; copying another market's calendar will misplace staff.

We downloaded the BLS QCEW quarterly open data files for 2023, 2024 and 2025 for NAICS 72, 721, 722 and 71 and kept private ownership records for each South Carolina county, the state (45000) and the U.S. (US000). Each quarterly record contains employment for each of its three months, measured as jobs in the pay period that includes the 12th. Quarterly establishment counts and total wages come from the same records. For each area and year we built the 12-month series, then computed the seasonality index as the highest month minus the lowest month, divided by the 12-month average.

Counties where BLS suppressed any quarter for confidentiality were excluded; for NAICS 72, 34 of 46 counties had complete data in all three years. QCEW counts jobs covered by unemployment insurance at the establishment's location, so it misses self-employed workers and some contractors, and a worker with two jobs counts twice. Monthly figures are not seasonally adjusted, which is the point of this analysis. Small counties can show large swings from a few dozen jobs, so we focus on counties with more than 1,000 hospitality jobs.