Labor trends up in Carolinas for payroll employment; gig economy like ride shares seeing increase

CHARLOTTE, N.C. ( QUEEN CITY NEWS ) — Ride share drivers transporting passengers from Charlotte Douglas International are hoping the Labor Day weekend brings them more money than usual.

Friday already proved to be an active day for the Charlotte airport ride-share parking lot, but Daniel Murphy says he’s not expecting much.

“I actually went back and looked at previous Labor Day weekends and I had just actually been pretty much just like a normal week,” Murphy said. “They haven’t been anything extraordinary about it or good or bad.”

He’s retired and spends the majority of his free time chauffeuring people around, using the money he gets to take care of expenses.

But Murphy says while holidays don’t see a spike in activity, requests have been consistent all year.

“This year they’ve been up,” he said. “I worked through COVID and didn’t take any time off in that. And that was an excellent time.”

Statista.org says 56 percent of Americans are in the gig economy like Murphy — people who have side jobs like ride share or delivery drivers.

South Carolina labor analytic officials say it’s tough to track those numbers, but there’s been significant growth in the payroll labor participation rate.

“We are having a lot of jobs in manufacturing, trade,” said Brandon Wilkerson, the labor market analytics director at the South Carolina Department of Employment Workforce. “Transportation is also a strong sector in South Carolina, as is health care. And because of the strong hospitality and tourism industry, we have a lot of jobs there as well. Those jobs saw an increase across the country.”

Wilkerson says the state has a record 2.5 million people employed and consecutive growth over the last six months.

North Carolina’s employment dipped slightly, but still sits with more than 5 million people employed.

“We are still near historic lows for our unemployment rate. And I think if you look at all the metrics together in South Carolina — regionally, nationally and historically — is performing very well,” Wilkerson said.

The Carolinas’ employment rates are far below the national percentage of 4.3 percent — sitting at 3.9 percent for South Carolina and 3.7 percent for North Carolina.

Those numbers help rideshare drivers and other delivery drivers also make money.

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