Strengthening South Carolina's Workforce

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South Carolina has enjoyed robust business development in recent years, with numerous companies boosting the Palmetto State’s profile in everything from aerospace to life sciences.

But that growth hasn’t come without challenges. Some companies struggle to find the right employees to find enough employees, while others seek employees who have the skills for the jobs.

How is South Carolina rising to meet its workforce challenges? Integrated Media Publishing hosted a roundtable discussion over Zoom with four leaders in the world of workforce development on July 17, 2025.

Here are excerpts from that conversation, edited for brevity and clarity.

The participants were: Laura Cox, director of Regional Workforce Advisory Team for South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce

Johnathan Munn, dean of the School of Business at Francis Marion University

Ray Lattimore, owner of Marketplace Professional Staffing

Alex Wilson, corporate human relations and recruiting manager, AFL

Integrated Media Publishing Editor David Dykes moderated the discussion.

Question: I want to welcome you to the roundtable this morning. Workforce development is such a big topic for everyone. The state of South Carolina's numbers show an awful lot of economic development, which is going to put more pressure on the workforce pipeline. I'd like for each of you to give me a brief overview of where you think the state is in terms of workforce development and what you would make as your priorities. Alex, we'll start with you.

Alex Wilson: Selfishly, I think from an AFL perspective, which is certainly where I can best contribute to this conversation … I think a continued emphasis on manufacturing, but specifically on new technology that can be utilized in manufacturing, is huge. Both (are) new technologies as far as manufacturing processes go, so increased capabilities within mechatronics and robotics and things like that, but also increased technologies like the products we're putting out. I think something that is maybe a downfall for us being in the technology sector in Duncan, South Carolina, is we're competing primarily with the automotive realm. A lot of workforce development is dedicated to automotive, which makes a lot of sense because that's the primary manufacturing focus in this area. But there are other companies coming to the area. We've been here for a long time, too. I would like to see maybe some more programs opened up to focus on some different type of manufacturing technology outside of the automotive realm.

Q. Laura, what do you see from your vantage point?

Laura Cox: Similar to our AFL counterpart, I'm going to talk specifically to what I see in that K-16 space. It's about education and awareness. What is available? What does it look like? What does it mean? My team works very hard across the state to connect those students, connect those educators, connect those businesses, so they're able to not only explore, they're able to get hands-on, and they're able to experience a little bit of all the different opportunities that are available here in South Carolina. So one unique thing about the RWA is that we do represent all 16 group clusters. So we aren't necessarily just focused on one specific group or industry. We do want all of our students to recognize that there are opportunities in South Carolina for each of them, no matter what their skill set is, no matter what they love, they can thrive here in our state. So sometimes you go into classrooms and you realize that students only know what their parents did, what their grandparents did. … They don't know all the things that are happening. They don't know that there's accountants in manufacturing. They don't know that you could be a graphics designer and be a part of the public sector, or that in a hospital setting, all 16 career clusters are somewhere within. For us, it's all about awareness and exposure and learning.

Q. Ray Lattimore, your thoughts?

Ray Lattimore: I was doing a lot of reading to prepare (for this roundtable). One of the statistics that stood out to me, it was just mindboggling as it relates to education and awareness is that 90 percent of the Gen Z group that is coming up, that's going to be the future workforce of South Carolina and America, they listen to their parents for career advice, 90 percent. But the problem is the parents are not aware of what careers are available. That is huge. Now, if you also look at it, the second one is 54 percent get their career advice from their teachers, and 0 percent get career advice from social media. It looked like to me that in this workforce development field, we need to target the parents and also the teachers. Social media is not where it's at. These statistics came from the Gallup poll, by the way.

Q. OK, Dr. Munn?

Johnathan Munn: Ray, that's a tremendous lead-in for me, so I appreciate it. Our position is in the production process, if we're talking about the labor force, is we're the conduit from our K-12 system to the actual job market. It's not just education, as far as teaching accounting and marketing and that sort of thing, but it's also for the students that we get, it is educating them on the possibilities that they have out there because, you're right, a lot of when we get first-year students in, their view of the things that they can do when they get out is way more limited than it is when they graduate. For us in higher education, particularly at Francis Marion, one of the things that we really try to do is pay attention and listen to our regional partners in industry to see what kinds of skills they need, and then not only try to incorporate that into the curriculum, but also relay that to our students, because sometimes that's faster than actually getting curricular changes. Being that conduit, like you're talking about, of information from trying to bump up that 54 percent for teachers and finding out what are our industrial partners are needing and relaying that information to try to broaden the horizons or the scope of what's possible for our students. Because when our first-years come in, they're very singularly focused: “I want to go in accounting, I want to be an accountant.” Well, they don't understand that you can get into auditing and you can be a comptroller and you can do all these other things with that degree. So we’re really trying to educate on that front, too.

Q. Let me drill a little deeper and make this an open forum. Workers and businesses today are navigating a rapidly changing economy. Technology, innovation, and changes in the global economy are constantly creating demand for new skills. South Carolina doesn't have a great high school graduation rate, but it does have a very successful technical school system. So what are some of the most pressing challenges in workforce development for South Carolina right now? What changes are necessary in South Carolina to address those changes? Ray, you want to start us off?

Lattimore: From my perspective, what I see is a number of factors that are affecting the rapidly changing environment of technology, innovation, and also the economy is that in the high school curriculum … someone needs to start teaching soft skills. That is a huge disrupter in the workforce. And that's before you even get to the technology and innovation. I mean, you got some very smart kids, but their soft skills are just lacking.

Q. You're talking about things like showing up on time and dressing appropriately?

Lattimore: Absolutely. I mean, it disrupts your culture. To me, culture is the most important thing. It's above skill set. What type of culture you're trying to generate and have. Secondly, the technical school system is outstanding in South Carolina. As chairman of Greenville Technical College, we develop programs specifically for industry. We just built a new Prisma nursing building. We're building a $40 million welding facility. It is one-third the cost of Clemson University, South Carolina, USC Upstate. So it's very, very affordable. But we have other issues in the state of South Carolina that affects that as well, and that is transportation. Transportation is a huge issue in terms of getting students to and from the schools. There's a skill gap as it relates to the technology. The technology is moving so fast that when we think we've caught up, they're 10 years ahead of us. There's need to be some type of futuristic task force that looks 10, 15 years down the road. … If you look at technology, AI, it's a game changer. I would tell you this, a lot of our kids are not even familiar with ChatGPT and these other instances. It's going to be a knowledge economy because in the manufacturing industry, everywhere I go, I see robots everywhere. So the future is here. There's a lot of opportunities in South Carolina as it relates to soft skills, transportation, education.

Q. Laura, what are your thoughts?

Cox: Echoing some of Ray's comments, specifically related to the technology that is changing. Again, we go back to awareness and exposure, how we are talking, we as a whole ecosystem -- business, education, workforce development, community partners -- about our jobs. Machine operators are no longer machine operators. They're essentially computer programmers. They are skilled technicians that are running not only a machine, but probably a line and are troubleshooting it. There's lots of different things that are going on in that position now that three to five years ago, it looked very different. You're talking about robots within the manufacturing setting. Just a quick anecdote, we have a camp going on right now with students with an RWA and a partner at the Department of Education, where they're teaching students how to using STEM robots, teaching students how to code those robots, and they're making the correlation to career development and career opportunities, talking about AMRs and how they are running the logistics in manufacturing settings. Somebody has to code that, right? So technology is changing so fast, and that is one thing. We've got to keep up with it. I do think on a larger scale outside of my role with DEW, the Coordinating Council, they are trying to look at some of those items, look at the transportation, the education, the outreach, the collaboration, and next steps for South Carolina. We are working on that systematic approach, and then can also work on that futuristic approach.

Q. Dr. Munn, what do you think that the educational curriculums need to do to change, to deal with this rapidly changing economy with technology and innovation. How do you take it from the classroom to the workplace?

Munn: For us, it's about trying to mesh the two as best we can. One of the things that we've done at Francis Marion is we've tried to move to a portfolio-based style in our upper-level classes, which means that where possible, and if it's not possible, we try to figure out ways to make it possible, we wanted projects-based curriculum where students are working on a project with an industry partner. We'll bring in folks from a local company that will help either design or assess. It depends on the class, obviously. But the project that we've got, for example, upper-level marketing class, we may bring in a United Way and do a marketing project for them that will go live. Because if anybody's ever had kids, you know I can tell my kids something a thousand times, and they tune me out. Then somebody else says the exact same thing and they go, “Oh, gosh, I've never thought about that.”

It's the same thing sometimes in a classroom where a teacher can say something a thousand times … but you bring in somebody who works, you bring in a CFO or you bring in an HR executive, and all of a sudden they sit up a little bit straighter and they listen, and it feels real to them. It also helps us help them develop those soft skills because now they're having to interact with professionals who are out in the workforce, doing presentations in front of them, shaking their hand, looking them in the eye after the presentation, making small talk, some of those things that might be a little uncomfortable at first. All of those things that you really can't codify in a textbook, but they matter. And so trying to figure out ways to bring those into the classroom. For us, we're trying to bring our industry into the classroom and interact with our students. It also helps them find jobs. I'm an economist by trade, so doing an economics presentation and having an outside partner come in and say, “Who is that? I'd like to talk to them.” It ends up leading to a job. For us, it's about trying to mesh the two, but you have to be proactive about it.

Q. Ever-ready workforce, we hear that a lot. It's a commitment to continuous learning and training. But what are South Carolina's strengths and weaknesses here? Alex, I'll start with you.

Wilson: I think to an earlier point, one of South Carolina's biggest strengths is our tech school programs. The fact that they are reduced-cost or often free, and not just from an associate degree level, but also from small classes and certifications and things like that. Those programs are huge. And also a lot of companies … if they are not free, we offer tuition assistance for some of these programs. So we have a rule that essentially says, as long as the degree you're pursuing is in relation to your current job or a future job at AFL, we're happy to assist you with paying for it. I hope that the cost of an education is moving toward becoming less of a burden on students than it has been in years past. I think one of South Carolina's key strengths is offering that, especially to the folks that are in the more technical roles. One thing we see a lot – and it's no secret that there's a lot of manufacturing companies in the area, I mean, in a five-mile radius of AFL, there's probably 100 in any direction – but most of these manufacturing companies that are here don't house their corporate headquarters here. When we're recruiting for corporate-level positions, for accounting, for marketing, for some of these other roles, it's very, very difficult to find people with the experience needed because most people who have worked in corporate don't also have the corporate manufacturing background to back it up. That's a challenge that we see. Also, just to add to the earlier conversation, one thing that we struggle with … is managing expectations of those coming into the workforce. There is a huge push, and rightfully so, globally and especially across the U.S., for company culture, for work-life balance, for growth and advancement, and all of these things. We do our best to provide those opportunities for our employees, and we create things like flexible time off and hybrid work schedule. But it's difficult to manage both the expectations of those coming in in a professional position along with the equity of the folks that are actually on our plant floor giving us enough money to where we can do this stuff.

It's very difficult managing both the corporate expectation that many students and new grads have as they're coming into our company with also recognizing that at the end of the day, we are a manufacturing company and we are reliant on the folks on the plant floor that are working those shifts and contributing to our profit more than anybody else. We can't just give all of these incentives to our professional-level folks and not keep in mind that we have to support a very large manufacturing workforce as well.

Q. Laura, let me ask you the same question. Ever-ready workforce, what are South Carolina's strengths and weaknesses?

Cox: A couple of points. We in South Carolina have so many learning and training opportunities. As Ms. Wilson just mentioned, it's two-year, it's four-year, it's short-term certificates, it's incumbent worker training. We have virtual options within the K-12 and 12-16 space. So there's a lot of educational pathways and personalized learning opportunities available. Specific to my team, one of the things that we also try to do is we connect businesses, but we also connect those students to those educational pathways. We want them to know that there is an opportunity to continue your education in South Carolina. You don't need to go outside the state. There's a multitude of different programs, different places, different ways that you can get that education. There's earn-as-you-learn and apprenticeships and internships and all kinds of things. We have a really robust education system when it comes to that and all the different types of offerings. I think we excel in that space to a large degree. Then I'll also tack on the adult side of things. With the recent launch of Find Your Future website, it's a new resource hub that folks can go on to, and they can try to figure out where that right fit is, if they are a career changer or if they have been let go or looking for new opportunities.

So that's a unique tool that is hot off the press. There's a Priority Occupations Dashboard. So you can look to see, where are those occupations? Where are they located in my area? What does that look like? And then, how can I get to that needed skill set or education that's there. And I do want to mention, too, related to when we talk to students and talk to folks about jobs, we're really in a lifelong learning world. Where you start is not where you might end up in 10, 15, 20 years, even two to five years, as we were just talking about career progression. So we talk about your first job, how your first job is important because it's going to prepare you for your next job, which will prepare you for your next opportunity to then get you to your best job, wherever that best job might be. So trying to also instill in the students that there are steps along the way that prepare you each time for that next opportunity.

Q. Somebody has mentioned transportation is a possible impediment, but I'd also like to bring up the subject of child care. Given South Carolina's rural areas, a lot of people just don't have adequate transportation, nor do they have adequate child care to be able to work. What can we do about that? Alex, I’ll start with you in saying, is there a corporate responsibility to help workers find child care or for corporations to provide child care to help alleviate that concern?

Wilson: That’s great topic. I have twins, so it's something near and dear to my heart because I had to find child care in order to return to work. I couldn't afford not to go back to work, and I didn't want to. I love my job, I love my career, and so I had to figure something out. I'm grateful that I was in a position to do so. However, I recognize that not everybody in the workforce can make that option because the cost of child care is incredibly expensive across the state. I do think there probably is some corporate responsibility in regards to that. I think a lot of corporations will try to alleviate some of that responsibility by providing flexible schedules, flexible time off programs, and things like that. Just from an HR perspective, the liability for putting child care inside your work environment is incredibly high. Most companies are not even going to touch that as an option because the liability alone is huge, and the cost is enormous from an insurance perspective, too, especially in the manufacturing sector, because you'd have to have an entirely different building in order to do that. We are seeing some companies in the area start to create some additional child care opportunities, specifically for working families to provide that.

So we're seeing a little bit of that. But I do think, broadly speaking, across South Carolina, we're probably a little bit behind the times when it comes to creating affordable and safe child care options for working-class families.

Q. Dr. Munn, you have studied the urban versus rural economies. What else needs to be done to help these rural economies catch up with innovation technology, find the workers, provide the child care, work on the soft skills?

Munn: You’re right. There's a wide divide there. Sometimes it's a question of, is supply following demand or is demand following supply? In our rural areas where you may not have the type of, let's say, manufacturing capacity that you have in the Upstate. You don't have those employers that are even really thinking about child care issues and that sort of thing. The flip side is, I think in the rural areas, you do see more old-school child care options that are more available: a family friend, a person who just keeps children at their house. Whereas the more urban you get, it becomes a more codified industry and that sort of thing. The transportation issue is a big issue. Things are more spread out and dispersed. And so your cost per mile or the value per mile traveled is going to be, let's say, for a city bus, is going to be much more expensive. You're going to get lower value per mile traveled because you're having to travel a lot more miles to connect people from where they live to where they work, whereas in a more condensed urban area, you can load up a bus, you can go a few miles down the road and get them where they need to be.

It's a situation where all of those problems are exacerbated and magnified. As far as solutions go, we have to look at it at a state level and realize that if we're wanting growth in our rural areas, some of the catalyst for that is going to have to come outside of those rural areas.

Q. Ray, what are your thoughts?

Lattimore: I want to go back to one of your previous questions, the strengths and the weaknesses, and then I'll come back to that. I think the strength in South Carolina is the educational system. I mean, from K-12 to the technical system, to the colleges and universities. … The technical school system in South Carolina is best in class. It is absolutely best in class. Right now at Greenville Tech, for the past three years, we have tuition-free. It's absolutely tuition-free. You would be surprised how many people don't know that exists. One of the weaknesses we have, we're the best kept secret in the country, in South Carolina. If you can go, No. 1, tuition is one-third the cost. You can go tuition-free. Two years at Greenville Tech, transferring to Furman, Clemson, or University of South Carolina, you're on the path to success. There's no issues in about it. But the thing is, is that not enough people know about it.

Now, when it comes to child care, I personally think that corporate America has a 100 percent responsibility as it relates to child care, whether they have it on their campus or not. If there's a corporation that is not paying a livable wage, that's a major issue. So we have to demand that these corporations pay a livable wage. You don't have that problem with AFL. … But I think we got to get the word out. There's so many programs in South Carolina. You got SC Works, you got SC DEW, you got SC READY. You got so many programs, but a lot of them are not coordinated enough to even leverage the commonalities of them. We spend a ton of money in the state of South Carolina on education, workforce development. That's really our No. 1 priority here. Manufacturing is going to continue to grow. It's a manufacturing-based economy. Corporations are going to continue to come to South Carolina. One thing that the young lady from AFL said, and I agree with you 100 percent, we don't have enough corporate headquarters here.

That's the big issue, is corporate headquarters in the state of South Carolina, especially Greenville. So I think if you look at this in its totality, it needs to be an asset-mapping apparatus to look at everything that we have across the board, eliminate duplications, and tie it all together, and then go on a massive PR campaign to get people involved in the process. That's the way I see it. In South Carolina, they used to say we're a small state, but I think sometimes we just think too small.

Q. Given the population projections and the growth, and especially in the urban areas, there's going to be a lot of demand for jobs. There's going to be a lot of relocation. One of the things that I hear about from some CEOs is a lack of communication skills. With all of our technology, with all of our innovation, people don't seem to be able to grasp the basics of communication. Are you finding that that's a problem as well that needs to be addressed?

Lattimore: Absolutely. Without a doubt. That goes back to the soft skills. I did a presentation with Burke Royster honoring some students, and he was on one hand and giving them the certificate, and I would shake their hand on the other end. Half the students, when they shook my hand would not look me in the eye. That's a major issue. If you go to Chick-fil-A, they're going to look you in the eye, and they're going to communicate with you. We know that training can be done.

Q. Alex, do you agree?

Wilson: I absolutely agree. We have a pretty large student program here at AFL. And so we travel quite frequently to different colleges and meet a lot of students. And some we're blown away with. And I wonder if we're blown away with them because they really are so fantastic or if we're blown away with them because they're meeting basic communication skills that used to be the norm. Whereas we talk to so many who walk up to our table and just stand there and wait for us to say something to them, to which I stand there and stare back often because I think it's important for students to make that initiative and to recognize that they need to be comfortable enough to walk up to somebody, shake their hands, look them in the eye, have some short introductory conversation starter. It doesn't have to be an elevator pitch. You don't have to sell yourself immediately upon meeting somebody. But you do have to be able to walk up to somebody, introduce yourself, and at least give off the persona that you are comfortable enough to do that. And I think that that is something that students really need to focus on.

I think it's a fine line. We have some incredible technology, and it can be so helpful in both the education sphere and the work and corporate sphere as well. But we cannot get so consumed by the ability to communicate virtually, that we stop communicating face to face. And I think the Covid era, I know it hurt these students that are going into the workforce now because some of that critical time where they would have been interacting with teachers and people coming on-site to their schools was shut down for several years. I know that had an impact, and I can have some grace and some empathy for that. But we have to make an overcorrection, I think, at this point to ensure that students and those people entering our workforce can communicate not just virtually, but face-to-face as well.

Q. Dr. Munn, how do you ing that into the classroom when you're talking about skills, technical knowledge, how do you bring that soft skill into the classroom. Or do you depend on the Department of Mass Communications to do that?

Munn: we have wonderful faculty in our Department of Mass Communications, and they do a fantastic job. But recognizing that what everyone is saying is an issue, it's something that we absolutely focus on, too. You tackle it on multiple fronts. One is presentations. That's going to become even more important in this world of AI, because we can press a button and I can get a fairly remarkable report or essay. I can get content. You can get AI to write a presentation for you. But what you can't do, at least live, is have it present it for you. We'll get to where it can do that virtually. When you're talking about differentiating yourself from your competition in the labor market, being able to look somebody in the eye, shake their hand, carry on a conversation, that's going to separate you from your competition if you're going for a job. That's something that we try to relay to our students, putting them in uncomfortable positions, making themselves stretch. That's how you grow. That's one. Just your basic presentations, you've got to get up, you've got to talk in front of people.

But at an even more granular level, we talk to our faculty about the importance of meeting with our students one-on-one. A lot of our students are intimidated to come up and talk to a faculty member. The same way when they enter the job force, they may be intimidated to come and talk to their manager initially. We work really hard on breaking down those barriers, whether that's making sure that they come to the office or talking before or after class, just to start to build up that rapport and break down those barriers. Then we've got some programmatic things that we do. For example, every year we do an etiquette dinner. We have faculty who set up an etiquette dinner. We bring a cohort of students, we take them over to the country club, they have a meal. Each table has an executive or a person from our local industries, we show them which fork to use for your salad, how to carry on a conversation. Eating at home when nobody is looking at you is different than eating at a table of colleagues or a business interview. We make a concerted effort to focus on those things.

Like Ray was saying with this Chick-fil-A example, it works. If students are willing to stretch, you can see a lot of growth from that freshman, sophomore student to that junior, senior student that is ready to go on to the job market.

Q. Finally, let me ask each one of you, if you were South Carolina's czar of workforce development, what one thing would you do differently? Laura, what would you do?

Cox: I'm going to piggyback on the last question because I believe our Francis Marion representative nailed it on the head. We got to practice. We got to get those students in front of folks. And that's what my team tries to partner and work with our local school districts, bring folks in, have them exposed, create opportunities, and prepare them. So we talk about resumes. We talk about shaking hands. Their elevator pitch, so to speak. They practice in competition before real industry partners are judging them. Etiquette dinners happen with some of our partners, all those things because we want them to be able to present themselves, their best selves forward when they're presented with that opportunity. I'll give a quick plug also for our Youth Employment site, one thing that we have partnered with in the past couple of years with the lieutenant governor, is making sure our youth know there's opportunities for you. What a better place to practice than a Chick-fil-A or an ice cream store, or the local T-shirt place, learning those real-world skills and practicing those real-world skills.

Our youth are very much a part of the workforce system as early as 15 and 16 doing part-time jobs and learning. But with all that, I think South Carolina is on a really good track. We've done a lot over the past few years with the changes with Act 67 and the coordinating council. We now have a director of the Office of Statewide Workforce Dr. (Rebecca) Battle-Bryant. It takes time for lots of these parts to come together to move forward, but we are making good progress. I think great strides have been made, and there's more to come. We're just not there yet. I'm excited to what's been happening and look forward to reaping the benefits of the foundation that's been laid in the past few months.

Q. Alex, if you were the czar of South Carolina’s workforce development?

Wilson: One thing I would do would be create new incentives for corporations for hiring students, whether they be high school students, college students, tech scholar students, all that stuff. I would create incentives for corporations to do more of that. Obviously, it's not something you can force, but I think there's ways to create new incentives and to get corporations involved because we can talk all day long about what companies should be doing and what companies need from the educational workforce. But I think the biggest issue we have is that we have corporations that are not investing enough time and resources into actually creating these programs within their company. They're not working closely enough to create these student programs. They know it's a need, but knowing it's a need and believing in it are different than actually creating a task force within your company to create opportunities for students and to work directly with the colleges and high schools and surrounding technical areas to bring those people on site and to actually really give them an opportunity. I think that creating new value and new incentives for companies to do that could be a nice way to cross the finish line on some of those things that we all know are important.

Q. Dr. Munn, if you were the czar?

Munn: I'll piggyback off of Alex's comment, which I think is dead-on. Creating incentives, from my perspective, for internships for students, particularly paid internships, to help get our students into the workforce, to get our industries to break down the barriers, grease the gears for the labor market there. If they are incentivized to give paid internships, it also helps with the cost of education and the cost of living for our students. I think the state's doing a good job of increasing communication to make sure that folks know what opportunities are out there. There are some wonderful opportunities for workforce development and our educational systems that I think a lot of parents and potential students are not aware of, and they don't even know where to go to find the information that they're looking for.

Q. Ray Lattimore, if you were the czar of the entire state, what one thing would you do differently?

Lattimore: I would take a holistic approach. I think there's a lot of time, energy, money, and talent that's already invested in workforce development. I don't know if we are as efficient as we could be or we're getting the desired results. We need some KPIs, we need some benchmark, and it's everything under the sun. I mean, it's soft skills, it's transportation, it's child care. All of these things need to come together for this system to work properly. I would take a holistic approach from top down. I like this Act 67, where it's like a coordinating council. I remember doing some reading on that, and I was so impressed with that. I think if you take this team here that you I have here, everybody has very positive knowledge of what's going on in the system and how we can get better. But I think a coordinating council, and under that coordinating council, I’d make sure there's a PR piece to that.

Q. Again, I want to thank each of you for your time this morning. It's been a very fruitful, informative discussion. Thank you all very much.