In our county, for employment other than that at minimum wage, a single adult can earn enough to be self-sufficient, requiring just $10.06 an hour to do so. Single adults only comprise 10.6% of Anderson county’s population, and our average household is 2.55 persons. A two-adult household needs to earn at least $8.43 each to cover all household costs; a household with a single adult and one child has a very different budgetary requirement, as seen in the table below.
| Two-person household configuration | Hourly wage required to be self-sufficient |
| 2 adults | $8.43 each |
| 1 adult, 1 infant | $19.07 |
| 1 adult, 1 pre-schooler | $18.08 |
| 1 adult, 1 school age child | $15.82 |
| 1 adult, 1 teenager | $12.45 |
92% of those working full-time in our county earn $12.44 or more: which is just barely enough to get by with a teenager in the house. Single adults at minimum wage, however, need to work at least 57 hours a week to make ends meet.
https://lmi.dew.sc.gov/lmi%20site/CommunityProfiles.html
SC Works has job postings, resume-building tools, and also information about our county’s labor market. Hover over Anderson County to see the labor force employment rate for a month; clicking on the county allows you to save a pdf version of the page.
The SC Appalachian Council of Governments compiles industry and labor information by county in a fact sheet. This can tell you, for example, that most workers in our county are employed in the services industry (45%, based on 2020 information). You can view and download the fact sheet here: https://www.scacog.org/regions/anderson
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has maps as well as data tables by county. Using the industry information from SC ACOG, you can see the most recent quarter’s employment trends within the industry (for example, 102 Service-providing or 1013 Manufacturing) by selecting All counties in a state, one industry – change the state to South Carolina, and then select the industry you want information on. This shows you that the manufacturing industry, on average, has significantly higher wages than the services industry.
Additionally, the Federal Reserve provides economic data at the state and census regional level: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/categories# which includes lending rates and levels.
The SC Association of Counties provides information on wages, salaries, and tax rates: https://www.sccounties.org/county/anderson-county
SC Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Online Analytics data captures employment information for Anderson county: https://public.tableau.com/views/RFAPublicDashboard/Employment?%3Adisplay_count=no&%3AshowVizHome=no#1 which includes the top eight occupations of the 18-64 age labor force, median age, and per capita personal income.
Upstate SC Alliance includes a variety of business, labor force, and business environment data in a Tableau dashboard, which presents information at the county, Upstate, state, and national levels. You can see for example that the average weekly rate across all industries was lowest in Anderson county compared to all other geographies: https://www.upstatescalliance.com/data-center-labor-force/
Federal poverty level: this is a cash-based model that serves as a simple definition for statistical planning. It provides a starting point for measuring a population in poverty. It does not change across the states, nor within our state. It does vary by family size, composition, and age of the householder. It excludes members of a population for whom no income determination can be performed. It is used to assess eligibility for Federal assistance, sometimes with multipliers.
In Anderson County, for example, the most recent estimate of the population in poverty is from 2019. Out of a population of 194,874, Anderson County has 28,417 persons in poverty. This includes 9,517 youth under the age of 18. This estimate undercounts the number of youth in poverty: the number of students in poverty in Anderson County public schools in 19,276.
Supplemental Poverty Measure: This official measure varies by family size, composition, and housing tenure (renters, owners with a mortgage, owners without a mortgage), and a geographic adjustment for housing cost. It is measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It also takes into account out-of-pocket medical expenditures, which are typically higher for the elderly.
You can read more about the details on the differences between the two Federal measures here:
In addition to the SPM considering medical expenditures, there is also the Elder Index, which calculates the amount of income older adults need to live independently. It follows the housing tenure model of the SPM, as well as considering the cost impact of health for those in excellent, good, and poor condition. It is available at the county level. It is a public dataset from the Gerontology Institute of the University of Massachusetts Boston. You can look at the range of scenarios for Anderson County here:
In Anderson County, the Elder Index shows that the elderly in poor health have $317 more out-of-pocket monthly expenses than those in excellent health.
https://www.uwasc.org/self-sufficiency-standard
The Self-Sufficiency Standard for SC (published in 2020) defines the minimum income needed to support a household without any external assistance. The Self-Sufficiency Standard includes information at the county level of income adequacy that is based on the costs of basic needs for working families: housing, childcare, food, health care, transportation, and miscellaneous items, as well as the cost of taxes and the impact of tax credits. In addition, the report provides for each of the 700 household types, the amount of emergency savings required to meet needs during a period of unemployment or other emergencies. This is an analysis that has been performed in 41 states. In South Carolina, the Self-Sufficiency Standard has been calculated in 2016 and 2020, which allows us to also look at the change in costs between these two periods.
