Workers across Greenville, Spartanburg and Greer saw their paychecks grow faster than most of the country last month. The metro area posted a 5.1% year-over-year increase in gross earnings and a 3.3% rise in base pay in September, landing it at No. 7 among the 56 largest metropolitan areas in the nation.
That ranking comes from fresh payroll data cited by Greenville Online, which breaks down the difference between the two pay measures: base pay reflects an employee's contracted wage or salary rate, while gross earnings also capture overtime, bonuses and other incentives. By that broader gross-earnings measure, the Upstate's 5.1% growth outpaced the 4.7% gain recorded for U.S. workers overall in September, according to the same report.
Only a handful of metros did better. Buffalo-Cheektowaga, New York, led the pack with 6.5% year-over-year gross pay growth, followed by San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, California, at 5.7%, per the Greenville Online report. WKBW reported that Buffalo ranked first among the 56 largest U.S. metros tracked in the data, with base pay there rising 3.3% year over year — essentially matching the Upstate's own base-pay gain. Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, Texas, came in at 5.4%, while Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin, Tennessee; Denver-Aurora-Centennial, Colorado; and Tulsa, Oklahoma, each posted 5.2% gains, the article notes.
Manufacturing's Outsized Role in the Upstate
The report ties the region's wage performance to its manufacturing base, noting the sector has been a major contributor to local pay gains. Nationally, manufacturing jobs saw 5.5% year-over-year gross pay growth in September, trailing only construction at 5.6%, with financial activities close behind at 5.4%, the same report states.
South Carolina Manufacturers and Commerce found in a 2026 study that the Upstate accounts for 48% of the state's manufacturing footprint, a concentration the group describes as nearly half of all manufacturing jobs in South Carolina. On its website, South Carolina Manufacturers and Commerce calls the sector “a major source of high-paying jobs, a driver of economic output, and a foundation for supply chains that support communities across the state.”
Job-Changers Still Out-Earning Those Who Stay Put
Nationally, workers who switched jobs saw considerably stronger pay growth than those who stayed in place. Median gross pay rose 7.3% year over year for job-changers compared with 4.4% for job-stayers, Greenville Online reported, citing ADP data. The gap showed up in base pay too: job-changers saw 4.8% growth versus 3.0% for job-stayers, according to the ADP National Employment Report, which also found U.S. private-sector employment grew by 90,000 jobs in September.
ADP economist Liv Wang said the Greenville-Spartanburg-Greer area's strong showing reflects growth across construction, manufacturing and financial activities, and noted that job-stayers have historically lagged behind job-changers in keeping pace with rising prices. The Upstate's share of job-changers remains below the national average, though it has been increasing — a trend Wang said points to greater mobility in the local labor market. Wang also pointed to new investment activity and shifting inflation dynamics as forces reshaping the local labor market away from the low-hire, low-fire conditions that defined much of the past year.
How Pay Growth Stacks Up Against Rising Prices
The U.S. consumer price index rose 3.4% over the 12 months ending in August, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, with energy prices up a sharper 16.3% and food prices up 2.7% over the same period. Those figures are not seasonally adjusted. Measured against that national inflation rate, the Upstate's 5.1% gross-earnings growth outpaced the rise in consumer prices, the Greenville Online report concluded.
The comparison playing out in Greenville has a parallel upstate New York, where Buffalo's 3.3% base-pay growth also came in just below the 3.4% inflation rate cited by WKBW. In both cases, base pay alone trailed the pace of national price increases even as broader gross-earnings growth pulled ahead — a distinction that underscores why the two pay measures tell different parts of the same story.
