WARN Act Layoffs in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

Analysis: Layoffs in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

# Economic Analysis: Layoffs in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

Overview: Scale and Significance of Workforce Reductions

Myrtle Beach has experienced 17 WARN Act notices affecting 808 workers over the period covered by available data, representing a significant disruption to a regional labor market already navigating broader economic headwinds. While this figure may appear modest compared to larger metropolitan areas, the concentration of job losses within a tourism-dependent coastal community of Myrtle Beach's size carries outsized economic weight. The 808 workers represent roughly 0.7 percent of South Carolina's insured unemployment base and arrive during a period of rising jobless claims across the state—initial claims rose 62.7 percent over the most recent four-week trend, climbing from 1,710 to 2,782 weekly filings. This timing underscores that Myrtle Beach's layoffs are not isolated incidents but rather part of a widening retrenchment in the regional labor market.

The significance of these reductions becomes sharper when contextualized against Myrtle Beach's economic structure. The resort town's employment base is heavily skewed toward hospitality, food service, and leisure—precisely the sectors most vulnerable to consumer spending volatility, seasonal demand fluctuations, and structural shifts in how tourists consume accommodation and dining services. That 49 percent of all WARN-notified workers (397 of 808) come from the Accommodation & Food sector signals that the city's dominant economic engine is contracting rather than expanding, a troubling signal for an economy built on visitor spending.

Key Employers and Drivers of Workforce Reductions

The largest single employer filing WARN notices is VSE Myrtle Beach, LLC Sheraton Broadway Plantation, which has filed two notices affecting 136 workers combined. This timeshare and resort operator's dual notices suggest either a phased reduction or ongoing structural reassessment of its workforce model. Equally significant is Medieval Times Medieval Knights, which eliminated 131 positions in a single notice—nearly one-sixth of all affected workers in the city. This dinner theater attraction represents a discretionary entertainment venue highly sensitive to tourism traffic and consumer confidence, making its substantial layoff a barometer of declining visitor spending or operational efficiency measures.

Hilton Grand Vacations eliminated 112 positions, while Kingston Resorts cut 94 jobs, indicating that the timeshare and vacation rental sector is experiencing broad contraction rather than isolated corporate struggles. Together, these four hospitality companies account for 437 workers—54 percent of all WARN-noticed layoffs in Myrtle Beach. Their collective action suggests shared exposure to common pressures: potential overexpansion relative to demand, rising labor costs, automation of customer service functions, or shifts in consumer preferences away from traditional timeshare models toward alternative accommodation platforms.

Healthcare and food service operations also appear in the data. Sodexo, operating food services for HCA Grand Strand Medical, cut 85 positions, while Hard Rock Cafe eliminated 82 jobs. The presence of hospital food service reductions during a period of rising healthcare demand is notable—it suggests either efficiency gains from centralized kitchen operations or a contraction in ancillary services that exceeds growth in primary clinical staffing.

Beyond hospitality, Frontier Communications filed a single WARN notice affecting 63 workers, representing the entire Information & Technology sector in this dataset. This telecommunications layoff reflects the sector's ongoing consolidation and the structural decline of traditional broadband providers facing competition from fiber and wireless alternatives. Similarly, FedEx's MYRA facility cut 57 positions, indicating pressure on regional logistics hubs amid evolving e-commerce patterns and automation of package sorting operations.

Industry Patterns and Structural Forces

The industry breakdown reveals an economy in transition with uneven sectoral pressures. Accommodation & Food dominates with nine notices and 397 affected workers, representing 49.1 percent of all layoffs. This concentration exposes Myrtle Beach's vulnerability to tourism cycles and the broader challenge facing full-service hospitality providers competing against budget alternatives, online booking platforms, and changing travel preferences. The sector's labor-intensity makes it particularly prone to sudden workforce reductions when occupancy rates or average daily rates decline.

Manufacturing accounts for three notices and 72 workers, including Tervis Tumbler's reduction of just four workers—a company that manufactures branded drinkware and operates with significant automation. The inclusion of small-scale manufacturing layoffs alongside larger operations suggests the sector lacks robust growth engines to absorb displaced workers.

Transportation (FedEx and unspecified carriers) and Healthcare each contribute modest shares—2 and 1 notice respectively—but the underlying trends in both sectors point toward continued pressure. Transportation faces automation of routine sorting and handling functions, while healthcare support services face efficiency pressures from integrated hospital systems and centralized food service contracting.

Historical Trends: Cyclical Contraction Following Pandemic Recovery

The distribution of WARN notices over time reveals a pattern consistent with post-pandemic adjustment. Ten notices were filed in 2020, the initial pandemic year, reflecting the immediate shock to hospitality and tourism. Three additional notices came in 2021 as extended closures and capacity restrictions persisted. The absence of notices in 2022 and 2023 suggests either improved conditions or employers implementing workforce reductions without formal WARN Act notifications, possibly through attrition or smaller reductions below notification thresholds.

The return of WARN activity in 2024 and 2025—two notices in each year—indicates that Myrtle Beach has not sustained pandemic-recovery momentum but rather has entered a new contraction phase. This renewed layoff activity occurs as the national economy shows resilience at the macro level (unemployment at 4.3 percent, job openings at 6.882 million), suggesting that Myrtle Beach's sectoral composition leaves it exposed to headwinds not uniformly affecting all regions. The timing also aligns with intensifying competition in the timeshare and vacation rental sector, suggesting that market saturation or shifting consumer preferences are driving consolidation.

Local Economic Impact: Employment, Consumer Spending, and Real Estate

The elimination of 808 jobs in a city with a metro-area population estimated around 450,000 represents roughly 0.4 percent of regional employment—a figure that understates the true impact because these positions concentrate in lower-wage service occupations with limited transferability. A lodging attendant or kitchen aide displaced from Medieval Times or a Sheraton resort faces substantial search frictions and may face the choice of downward occupational mobility, extended unemployment, or outmigration to larger labor markets.

The income loss compounds community-wide. Myrtle Beach's service-sector workers typically earn $25,000 to $35,000 annually. Assuming an average of $30,000 per affected worker, the 808 layoffs represent approximately $24.2 million in annual lost wage income. This reduction cascades through the local economy via reduced consumer spending at restaurants, retail establishments, and service providers. Given that service-sector workers typically have marginal propensity to consume near 0.9 (spending 90 percent of incremental income), the multiplier effect could suppress local spending by $21.8 million annually, sufficient to suppress tax revenues and create secondary employment effects in downstream businesses.

The real estate implications warrant attention as well. Myrtle Beach's housing market depends heavily on local wage earners—service workers purchasing starter homes or renting apartments. Elevated unemployment may depress new household formation, suppress rental demand, and reduce property tax revenues for school systems and municipal government. The broader risk appears to be a downward spiral wherein reduced tourism and hospitality employment suppress housing demand and consumer spending, potentially triggering further business closures and layoffs.

Regional Context: How Myrtle Beach Fits Broader South Carolina Trends

South Carolina's labor market shows signs of stress despite overall national resilience. Initial jobless claims rose 62.7 percent over the most recent four-week trend, climbing from 1,710 to 2,782 weekly filings. The insured unemployment rate stands at 0.67 percent, higher than the national rate of 1.26 percent, and year-over-year comparisons show only modest improvement (down 26.4 percent from prior-year levels). This mixed picture—declining year-over-year but rising quarter-over-quarter—suggests that South Carolina is entering a new phase of labor market softening after a sustained recovery period.

Myrtle Beach's reliance on tourism and hospitality makes it particularly vulnerable to this statewide trend. While Charleston and the Upstate (Greenville-Spartanburg corridor) benefit from manufacturing, logistics, and professional services diversification, Myrtle Beach remains concentrated in accommodation, food service, and entertainment. The absence of significant technology, finance, or advanced manufacturing operations means that Myrtle Beach lacks the economic diversification to absorb workforce reductions through offsetting sectoral growth.

Notably, the H-1B data reveals that South Carolina's most significant employers of foreign workers—Clemson University, Capgemini America, Wipro, Tech Mahindra—are concentrated in technology and professional services roles located in the Upstate and Charleston, not in Myrtle Beach. This geographic mismatch indicates that the foreign worker visa program is not a labor supply constraint for Myrtle Beach hospitality employers but rather reflects the state's broader skill and sector concentration patterns.

Employer-Level Risk Signals and Forward Indicators

The data identifies Sodexo as a company with elevated distress signals across multiple datasets, with 10 WARN notices nationwide affecting 1,414 employees and a bankruptcy risk score of 6. In Myrtle Beach, Sodexo's single notice cutting 85 food service workers at HCA Grand Strand Medical may signal broader consolidation within contracted food service operations. If Sodexo faces financial distress, additional Myrtle Beach locations could be vulnerable, though the limited number of identified Sodexo operations (one) suggests manageable concentration risk.

The appearance of Frontier Communications in the 2025 layoff data, cutting 63 positions, reflects the broader telecommunications sector contraction affecting smaller regional providers. Frontier faces intense competition from fiber-deploying incumbents and wireless carriers, making additional workforce reductions likely as the company completes its network modernization or exits unprofitable market segments.

The timeshare sector's repeated appearance—three companies (VSE Myrtle Beach/Sheraton Broadway Plantation, Hilton Grand Vacations, Kingston Resorts) accounting for 342 workers—suggests a sector experiencing structural headwinds. The rise of Airbnb, VRBO, and direct-booking platforms has fragmented the traditional timeshare model, forcing operators to reduce staffing or implement revenue management strategies that require fewer employees. These trends are unlikely to reverse, making additional timeshare-sector layoffs probable.

Myrtle Beach's layoff landscape reflects the collision of structural economic forces—tourism demand volatility, platform disruption of traditional hospitality models, telecommunications consolidation, and regional labor market softening—all concentrated in a geographically small, sectorally dependent community. The 808 affected workers represent real income loss and community disruption, while the absence of offsetting sectoral growth suggests that Myrtle Beach faces a period of slower employment growth and potential outmigration of younger workers seeking opportunities in more diversified regional labor markets.