South Carolina is known for its affordability, a key selling point for newcomers who have moved here to escape higher costs of living in other states.
But just how affordable is SC if you’re living off the state’s minimum wage?
While some states have boosted their minimum wage, the Palmetto State doesn’t have its own specific minimum wage law, meaning SC uses the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour established by the Fair Labor Standards Act. The last time the federal minimum wage was updated was in 2009.
Granted, few people accept a wage that low. Only 1.5% of SC workers were getting paid the minimum wage, according to a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report from 2021.
It would be quite improbable for someone to live off the minimum wage in SC, unless they’re working an extreme number of hours throughout the week (or more than one job), a new report says.
SmartAsset, a financial technology company, found the wage needed in each state to make a decent living and compared it to the state’s minimum wage. The group ranked all 50 states based on the purchasing power of the state’s minimum wage relative to living costs.
The MIT Living Wage Calculator was used to source the living wage for a single adult with no children in each state. MIT data was published in February 2026.
Here’s where SC placed:
There are 19 other states that also use the federal minimum wage, but SC still ranks close to the bottom, coming in at 44th.
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