UNION, S.C. (AP) - Dollar General Corp. plans to employ 600 people at a $50 million regional distribution center in a county with one of the state's highest unemployment rates, state officials said.
Gov. Mark Sanford and Commerce Secretary Bob Faith are expected to attend a ceremony Thursday where company officials will announce plans.
Dollar General plans to begin construction in March and eventually employ 50 salaried workers earning $50,000 a year and several hundred employees earning $8 to $11 an hour.
The last time so many new jobs were announced in Union County was in 1956 when Conso provided 700 jobs.
"If you're looking at unemployment in South Carolina, our rural areas have been particularly hard hit," Sanford said. "In Union, you're at 11 percent unemployment, which is the seventh-highest rate in the entire state.
"Anytime you can inject the number of jobs Dollar General is bringing into that equation it's obviously a positive thing."
Union County's unemployment rate stood at 11.2 percent in December, well above the state's rate of 6.1 percent. In the past year, three plants in the county have closed and workers have been laid off at two others.
Faith said the company chose to locate in Union County because local officials showed they were "100 percent committed to this project from day one, and it showed in the effort they made to win Dollar General's business."
Dollar General has more than 6,000 stores in 27 states throughout the country, including two in Union County. The Union facility would be the company's eighth distribution center.
Dollar General stores are typically located in communities of less than 25,000 people or in selected locations within larger metropolitan areas. Typical customers have a median income of less than $35,000 and the typical transaction ranges from $8 to $13.
Dollar General generated more than $6.9 billion in sales for the fiscal year ending Jan. 31, 2004 - a 12.7 percent increase over the previous year.
