South Carolina Feasibility Studies

South Carolina held 5,570,274 residents on July 1, 2025, against an April 2020 base of 5,118,250 ¹. The Census Bureau's January 2026 release put the one-year gain at 79,958 and ranked the state first by percentage growth and fifth by numeric gain ². The state's labor market office read the same release as the fastest growth in the country and counted 66,622 net domestic migrants in the year ³. The payroll figures cover a later span: total nonfarm employment reached 2,426,300 in August 2026, preliminary and seasonally adjusted, up 38,600 on August 2025 ⁴.

Net international migration for South Carolina was not found, so this page does not say how much of the gain came from abroad.

June 2026 payrolls by sector

DEW's June 2026 release counted 127,500 jobs in construction, 262,600 in manufacturing, 444,500 in trade, transportation and utilities, 312,500 in professional and business services, 321,900 in education and health services, 288,500 in leisure and hospitality and 399,000 in government ⁵. Education and health services added 8,100 jobs over the year to June ⁵. Over the same year professional and business services lost 4,400 jobs and information 2,500, while manufacturing and financial activities edged up ⁵.

The largest private employers are known only from secondary lists. IBISWorld places Walmart at 37,387 workers and Prisma Health at 28,761 statewide ⁷, and the Charleston Regional Development Alliance gives Boeing South Carolina 9,059 employees in 2025 ⁸.

The Department of Commerce announced $9.12 billion of capital investment from recruited projects in 2025, the third-highest year on record, with $4.25 billion of it in rural counties ⁹. The year before, the Governor's office reported $8.19 billion and more than 5,500 new jobs ¹⁰. Those are announcements, not completions.

Households

The 2020 to 2024 five-year American Community Survey estimate puts the state's median household income at $69,324 ²¹. The same 2020 to 2024 five-year American Community Survey estimate puts the median value of an owner-occupied home at $259,000 ²¹.

The South Carolina District serves the state from three offices. Columbia serves Richland, Lexington, Florence, Orangeburg and Sumter among other counties; the Charleston virtual office serves Horry, Charleston, Beaufort, Jasper, Colleton and Hampton among others; and the Spartanburg (Duncan) office serves Greenville and Spartanburg counties, with York, Lancaster and Chester among others ¹⁶. The I-95 corridor counties are split, Dillon, Marion, Clarendon and Orangeburg to Columbia and Colleton and Hampton to the Charleston virtual office ¹⁶.

SBA may require a feasibility study under 13 CFR 120.160(b): SBA may require professional appraisals, a survey, or a feasibility study ⁸². What SBA tests in the file is set out on our SBA 7(a) and 504 practice page. South Carolina's published hotel case uses a 504 structure for a ground-up select-service property.

The South Carolina Wind and Hail Underwriting Association is the insurer of last resort for wind and hail in its coastal Beach territory ³¹. A secondary insurance site lists the territory as Beaufort, Charleston, Colleton, Georgetown and Horry counties, and notes that the state has no inland FAIR Plan ³². The association renewed its territory order in March 2025 and raised rates from February 1, 2026 ³³; the research could not source the size of the change for commercial lines.

The November 2024 storms opened the period with a major disaster declaration, DR-4858-SC, on January 10, 2025, for Public Assistance only, with Bamberg, Calhoun and Orangeburg counties named as the request area ³⁷. FEMA had obligated $3,377,514.24 of Public Assistance by May 19, 2026 ³⁷. The linked SBA declaration set an economic injury deadline of October 10, 2025 ³⁸.

Fire management declarations covered the Covington Drive Fire on March 7, 2025, by a secondary site citing FEMA data ³⁹, and the Table Rock fires in the Upstate on March 23, 2025 ⁴⁰. EM-3632-SC, an emergency declaration for the January 2026 winter storm, came on January 23 ⁴¹, and a major disaster declaration followed on April 7, 2026 with Public Assistance for Greenville, Oconee and Pickens counties ⁴².

None of these declarations is for a hurricane.

Two Charleston-area water and sewer providers

Our Charleston page carries Berkeley County Water & Sanitation's residential sewer impact fee, charged per equivalent residential unit, and a Charleston Water System new-home connection.

The Post and Courier, reporting the Census estimates, put the Greenville-Anderson-Greer metro of Greenville, Anderson, Pickens and Laurens counties at 1,014,101 residents on July 1, 2025, 85,894 more than at the 2020 census ⁵⁶. Nonfarm employment stood at 485,800 in June 2026, up 7,200 on a year earlier ⁵, and Greenville County alone held 302,812 jobs covered by unemployment insurance in March 2026 ⁵⁷. Prisma Health counted 17,824 team members across the Upstate in FY2023, with 5,545 at Greenville Memorial Hospital ⁵⁵.

For apartments the record runs five quarters. Cushman & Wakefield's series for the fourth quarter of 2024 through the fourth quarter of 2025 gives net absorption of 307 units, 662 units, 380 units, 422 units and 299 units, with vacancy lower at the end of the run than at its start ⁴⁹. No asking rent or count of units under construction was found beside them. Hotels averaged a daily rate of $124.46 in 2025 through the third quarter, per a business magazine citing Colliers ⁵⁸, with no RevPAR or pipeline beside it. Industrial vacancy is published for the combined Greenville-Spartanburg market: Colliers measured 9.28% in the first quarter of 2025 ⁵⁹, a reading taken more than a year before the payroll figures above. Colliers names the Midtown I-385/I-85 submarket and the downtown business district as the office corridors ⁶¹.

A secondary fee guide gives a ReWa sewer new-account fee of $4,110 for a residential 3/4 inch meter through September 30, 2026, stepping up on October 1, 2026 and again to $6,947 from October 1, 2027, alongside a Greenville Water capacity fee of $2,780 and a City of Greenville sewer tap fee of $363 ⁶⁰. The guide's figures are for a residential meter. ReWa's capital improvements list also carries the Dig Greenville gravity sewer tunnel ⁶². The April 2026 winter storm declaration covered Greenville and Pickens counties ⁴².

An encyclopedia entry citing the Vintage 2025 estimates puts the Columbia metro, whose counties include Richland and Lexington, at 879,918 residents ⁴⁴. Richland County held 434,956 on July 1, 2025 against 416,147 at the 2020 census ⁴³.

At Blythewood, the Town announced $368 million of Scout Motors supplier investment awarded on September 18, 2025 ⁴⁵, and production at the plant was targeted for the end of 2026 ⁴⁶. The headquarters went to Charlotte, North Carolina ⁴⁷. A new I-77 interchange at Scout Motors Drive broke ground in February 2025 ⁴⁸.

For the fourth quarter of 2024 through the fourth quarter of 2025, Cushman & Wakefield's series gives Columbia net apartment absorption of 80 units, 111 units, 179 units, 90 units and 207 units ⁴⁹. Colliers describes Columbia's industrial vacancy as largely normalizing but gives no value ⁵⁰.

Horry County, the whole of the Myrtle Beach-Conway metro, counted 351,029 residents at the 2020 census ⁵¹, and the same television report placed it second among the fastest-growing metros in the country for 2024 to 2025 ⁶⁴. Nonfarm employment was 159,700 in June 2026 ⁵.

Lodging is the best-measured part of this market. Visit Myrtle Beach reports average hotel occupancy of 70.2% for June to August 2025 ⁷⁷. A trade site puts 2025 at fewer than 6.5 million occupied hotel room nights and about $990 million of hotel revenue ⁷⁸. Short-term rentals are a market of their own: AirDNA counts 20,613 active listings with an average daily rate of $278 and RevPAR of $151 for the twelve months to August 2026 ⁷⁹. The summer occupancy and the trade site's room nights stand without a full-year rate or RevPAR beside them.

Residential permits reach this page only as monthly figures from the Census series in FRED ⁸¹; the research did not retrieve a metro or county total from the Census annual file. North Myrtle Beach began requiring a current property survey with every permit application from September 1, 2025, by a contractor's summary of the city notice ⁸⁰.

This section groups Dillon, Marion, Clarendon, Orangeburg, Colleton and Hampton counties: a grouping made for this page, not one Census area. Population is falling where it is measured. Encyclopedia entries citing Census data give Dillon County 27,458 residents in 2025 against 28,292 in 2020 ⁷⁴ and Marion County 28,242 against 29,183 ⁷⁵, and a table citing the Vintage 2025 estimates gives Orangeburg County 83,177 against 84,223, a fall of 1.24% ⁵¹. No 2025 figures for Clarendon, Colleton or Hampton are in the record.

No payroll series covers these counties, so the only employment measure is the household survey, which counts residents with jobs wherever they work. In July 2026 it counted 11,722 employed residents in Dillon County, 10,874 in Marion County against 11,339 a year earlier, 33,652 in Orangeburg County against 33,174, and 15,573 in Colleton County against 15,298 ⁶.

The investment is in sites and bridges. The Colleton Mega-Site offers 1,481 acres at Exit 57, with the Colleton Commerce Center and Colleton Industrial Campus at Exit 62, and the I-95 and I-26 triangle in Orangeburg County is the other named node, by older and undated documents ⁷⁶⁸⁵. The Lake Marion bridges between Clarendon and Orangeburg counties are a $350 million project that won a $175 million federal grant on July 17, 2024 ⁷³. A Carolina Renewables Products plant with 155 jobs was among the 2025 announcements reported for Orangeburg County ⁷², and the Energy Security Act authorizes new gas generation at Canadys in Colleton County ³⁴. Orangeburg County was in the request area of the January 2025 flood declaration ³⁷. The research also looked for Inland Port Dillon's throughput and did not find it.