Layoffs in South Carolina.

One note on dates. South Carolina's feed supplies a single date per filing, and comparison against the state's own published report shows it is sometimes the closure date rather than the date the notice was filed. Dates on this page should be read as the date the state associates with the filing, and we are working the mapping.

Where South Carolina layoffs have been concentrated

Electrolux Consumer Products noticed 1,255 jobs in Anderson, close to a third of every South Carolina job in this year's filings and the kind of event that reorganizes a county's economy rather than merely its employment numbers. Appliance manufacturing was one of the industries that anchored the Upstate, and a closure at that scale is felt in the schools and the tax base as much as in the plant.

Around it sits the mix that replaced the older textile economy. RNDC noticed 451 in Lexington as its distribution retreat reached the state, Charter Communications filed four separate times, and Boeing three, the Charleston aerospace presence that South Carolina spent a decade recruiting.

The Lowcountry contributes a quieter pattern worth naming. WeDriveU, a transportation contractor, filed twice in Charleston for roughly 400 jobs combined, and House of Raeford noticed 216 in Williamsburg County, service and food processing work in places where those employers are among the largest available.

The companies that keep filing in South Carolina

South Carolina's repeat filers are national companies with a state footprint rather than local employers in trouble. Most notices since 2023.

• KPR US LLC · 4 notices since 2023
• Charter Communications · 4 notices since 2023
• The Boeing Company · 3 notices since 2023

Charter's four and Boeing's three describe decisions taken in Connecticut and Virginia that arrive in Lexington and Charleston, which is the trade South Carolina made when it recruited large out-of-state employers. The jobs are real and so is the exposure to somebody else's restructuring.

South Carolina leaves notice entirely to federal law

South Carolina has no notice statute on its books. The state is absent from that roster, meaning federal WARN supplies every right to advance warning that exists here, from its 100-employee coverage floor to its 60-day period.

For a plant closure the size of the Anderson event, those federal rules do real work, since a single site losing over a thousand jobs clears every threshold comfortably. The gap opens further down, with one distinction worth getting right. Coverage attaches to the employer, not the building, so a 60-person plant belonging to a large manufacturer can still owe notice when the closing affects 50 or more workers. The genuine gap is the small independent employer, where the whole company sits under 100 people and a complete shutdown can arrive with no warning owed at all.

The state's part is administrative and supportive. SC Works publishes the notices it receives, which feeds this page, and coordinates the rapid response and retraining services that follow a covered event.

What happens after a WARN notice is filed in South Carolina

Filings reach SC Works, which sends rapid response to large closures, and the state's technical college system is the usual destination for retraining, a well-worn path in a state that has retrained its workforce through two industrial transitions already.

For an event the size of the Anderson closure, go to the on-site sessions rather than waiting for a letter. Large closures attract concentrated resources for a limited window, and the people who attend early tend to reach the funded programs before the cohort fills.

Open the South Carolina claim on our benefits page straight away. The state's benefit duration is shorter than the national norm, which compresses the timeline for any retraining decision and makes the budget math urgent rather than eventual.

Use what South Carolina owes you

• For a large plant closure, attend the on-site rapid response sessions early, funded retraining slots at the technical colleges fill on a schedule and the first cohort has the most options.
• Check South Carolina's benefit duration on our state page before planning a retraining timeline, since it runs shorter than many states and that changes what is realistic.
• Aerospace and automotive workers, your skills transfer across the Southeast's plants, so weigh a regional search against a local one honestly before committing to either.
• On a cut this size, short notice from a covered employer converts into recoverable federal back pay, and groups this large tend to organize counsel fast, so ask early.
• Contractor employees at transportation and food-service operations, confirm which company employed you, since the client site and the employer of record are frequently different here.

The biggest layoffs in South Carolina's record

Our South Carolina archive opens in 2013 and peaks at 137 notices in 2020, with 2019 and 2024 the next heaviest at 47 and 43. The state produces a steady low-volume stream punctuated by occasional very large single events, which is what an economy built on a few very large plants looks like in a filing log.

That structure is the legacy of a deliberate strategy. South Carolina recruited large manufacturers aggressively for decades, winning aerospace, automotive and appliance plants, and the resulting employment is concentrated by design.

The upside is high-wage work in places that had little. The downside is visible in this year's record, where a single company's decision accounts for roughly three in every ten jobs lost across the state.

Common questions