Labor Market Pulse · Finance · September 2026
Finance Labor Market Report: SC NONMETROPOLITAN AREA — September 2026
Nonmetro SC finance pay splits sharply by role, not direction.
Controller pay is up to $109,596 locally while FP&A Manager pay falls significantly to $120,100, and Tax Specialist pay sits 36% below the $65,842 national median.
Free archive edition. Published by WageScape as sent to subscribers; data as of September 2026.
Key indicators
- SC statewide unemployment: 4.1% — August 2026, unchanged from July
- Tax Specialist pay gap vs national: -$23,551 — $42,291 metro vs $65,842 national median
- SC manufacturing WARN notices: 10 filings, 870 workers — 2026 YTD, incl. DP World Spartanburg Sept 1
- National F&A payroll trend: -129,000 jobs — Since May 2025, concentrated in insurance carriers
Key takeaways
Nonmetro finance pay is splitting, not simply rising or falling.
Controller pay ($109,596) and Credit Analyst pay ($73,651) are both trending up locally, while FP&A Manager ($120,100) and Tax Specialist ($42,291) pay are falling significantly. Blanket cost-of-labor adjustments risk overpaying for roles in decline and underpricing roles in genuine demand.
Tax Specialist pay gap versus national market has widened sharply.
Metro median of $42,291 sits roughly 36% below the national median of $65,842, a gap wide enough to suggest sourcing from outside the immediate nonmetro labor pool or building tax capability through outsourcing rather than direct hire.
Manufacturing-linked WARN activity bears watching for talent spillover.
DP World's September 1 filing affecting 205 Spartanburg-area workers adds to a statewide pattern of manufacturing-heavy WARN notices (10 filings, 870 workers in 2026). Released logistics and operations talent may create near-term opportunities to backfill finance-adjacent support roles at lower acquisition cost.
National F&A wage deceleration may not translate locally yet.
September's national average hourly earnings growth (3.0% year-over-year) came in below expectations, easing budget pressure broadly, but nonmetro South Carolina's mixed role-level pay movements suggest this market isn't yet tracking the national cooling signal uniformly.
Median advertised pay by role — SC NONMETROPOLITAN AREA
| Role | 25th percentile | Median advertised pay | 75th percentile | Metro trend | National median |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Controller | $89,936 | $109,596 | $114,119 | Significant increase | $113,754 |
| Senior Accountant | $68,179 | $83,614 | $87,658 | Moderate decline | $87,731 |
| Financial Analyst | $67,378 | $86,799 | $100,043 | Moderate increase | $94,782 |
| Billing Specialist | $35,191 | $41,600 | $48,497 | Stable | $49,512 |
| Tax Specialist | $36,361 | $42,291 | $48,085 | Significant decline | $65,842 |
| Credit Analyst | $53,300 | $73,651 | $73,651 | Moderate increase | $71,758 |
| FP&A Manager | $98,553 | $120,100 | $125,959 | Significant decline | $128,139 |
WageScape's median is calibrated to correct for spurious low-value postings (reported as the 60th percentile of raw advertised pay). Download: CSV · JSON
Local market conditions
South Carolina's nonmetro counties continue to operate inside a historically tight state labor market — 4.1% statewide unemployment in August, with manufacturing and logistics layoffs (DP World's 205-worker WARN notice in Spartanburg, filed September 1) signaling localized softening even as aerospace, defense, and distribution hiring expands elsewhere in the state. Statewide wage growth of 4.0% year-over-year masks a widening urban-rural split, with Charleston posting 5.7% growth in Q1 while nonmetro counties likely lag given their heavier reliance on manufacturing and lower-wage service employment.
What it means
National financial-activities employment has contracted for sixteen straight months, but F&A leaders are still reporting a 77% talent shortage index and aggressive hiring plans — a contradiction that plays out differently in nonmetro South Carolina, where thinner finance talent pools make every open requisition harder to fill regardless of national sector softness. Decelerating national wage growth (3.0% year-over-year in September) offers budget relief, but metro-specific pay movements — Controller and Credit Analyst pay both rising locally while Tax Specialist and FP&A Manager pay fall significantly — suggest nonmetro compensation structures are repricing unevenly by role rather than moving as a block. Consider reviewing role-level advertised pay rather than applying a blanket merit increase assumption, since this market is rewarding select finance functions while compressing others.
Looking ahead
Worth watching: Whether DP World's Spartanburg WARN notice signals broader logistics-sector softening in the Upstate nonmetro counties, or remains an isolated filing. A cluster of similar notices would materially expand the local finance-adjacent candidate pool.
Emerging pressure point: Tax Specialist compensation has fallen significantly against a national market moving up significantly — a divergence worth monitoring for retention risk if specialists start benchmarking against remote or hybrid national postings.
Expected: South Carolina's 2026 tax reform (1.99%/5.21% bracket structure, $14,000 UI wage base) will continue flowing through H2 payroll cost models; confirm finance teams have finalized budget assumptions reflecting the new new-employer UI rate.
Potential inflection point: National financial-activities job losses have now run sixteen consecutive months; watch whether nonmetro South Carolina begins mirroring that contraction or continues to diverge given the state's broader 1.6% annual payroll growth.
Methodology
Advertised pay from active employer job postings, not survey data. WageScape's median is calibrated to correct for spurious low-value postings: distribution analysis shows roughly the lowest 10% of raw values are erroneous entries, so the reported median is the 60th percentile of raw advertised pay. WageScape observes 98% of U.S. job openings daily.
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