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Warning signs found in new South Dakota economic data

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Warning signs found in new South Dakota economic data


So far in the post-pandemic period, the South Dakota economy is humming along nicely, though some new economic indicators reveal concerns that growth might slow in the coming months or years.

According to a recent financial forecast produced by the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors, many data points show the state has been in a very strong financial position in regard to housing, employment, income and gross domestic production.

However, three economic experts asked by News Watch to review and analyze the state forecast said the almost unprecedented growth seen since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 appears to be tapering off.

Southeast SD surges ahead of Black Hills in tourism revenue

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South Dakota saw $4.96 billion in tourism spending in 2023, with 14.7 million visitors. Increasingly, more of them are drawn to the 14 counties in and around Sioux Falls.

“I’d say our economy has grown very strongly over the last three years, uncharacteristically strongly, and this year, we are seeing kind of a reversion to the mean, kind of a return to more of the normal, if you will,” said Jared McEntaffer, CEO of the Dakota Institute, a nonprofit group focused on analyzing and aiding the South Dakota economy.

New data points underscore challenges

Furthermore, the experts said a few indicators in the recent state report should be watched closely, as they carry potential warning signs for the future.

Chief among those concerning indicators:

  • A somewhat stark drop in overall farm income since 2022 that can cause negative ripple effects across the entire state economy.
  • Lower-than-expected state sales tax collections in June and July, which could portend a crisis if that trend continues – especially if voters decide in November to end the sales tax on consumable goods.
  • The vast divide between the roughly 30,000 open jobs in the state and the 10,000 unemployed people in the workforce, which can stall business growth and productivity.

chart visualization

  • The state’s 2% unemployment rate, which could lead to employers hoarding existing workers and preventing businesses from being able to expand or grow.
  • A steady slide in growth rate in personal incomes since 2021.
  • A slip in gross domestic product growth in 2024 that may be the result of other economic factors that are slowing growth overall in the state.

Despite those results, McEntaffer said that “there’s no red flags that I’m seeing that jump out to me and say, ‘Hey, we could be looking at a change in fortunes in South Dakota.’”

Here is an at-a-glance look at a few economic indicators that the economists highlighted in the Aug. 29, 2024, report.

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Farm incomes fall from peak

According to the state report, overall farm income in South Dakota was around $700 million in 2006, then rose to $3.7 billion in 2011 before dropping to about $1.2 billion in 2016-17. When the pandemic hit in 2020, however, demand and commodity prices both rose sharply and as a result, so did farm income, reaching $3.7 billion in 2021 and peaking at $4.4 billion in 2022.

South Dakota No. 1 state in nation for hemp production

South Dakota recently became the top producer of hemp fibers after being the third-to-last state to make it legal just three years ago.

Since then, however, prices have come down and overall farm income fell as well, to $3.8 billion in 2023, with prices for corn and soybeans continuing to decline in 2024. Spending on farm equipment also dipped in 2023, the state report showed.

Joe Santos, a macro economics professor at South Dakota State University, said commodity prices paid to state farmers rose sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic and when war broke out in Ukraine, due to the loss of production of grain in Ukraine and the initial disruption of supply lines that drove up demand.

“Obviously, we don’t want to see a pandemic, and we’d love to see peace in Ukraine,” he said. “But without those pressures, prices will sort of ease. And while they won’t go into the toilet, they won’t be where they were when you had a pandemic and the belligerent activity that drove up commodity prices.”

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A flooded field in South Dakota
The agriculture industry in South Dakota has faced some financial headwinds, including flooding that occurred on this Campbell County farm property east of Herreid, S.D., on June 8, 2022. (Photo: Stu Whitney / South Dakota News Watch)

The dip in farm incomes and the resulting negative outcomes statewide are good examples of how the South Dakota economy is often tied to external forces and events, Santos said.

“I think the way you’re going to see sluggishness in terms of economic activity in the state is probably going to be imported, in that the economic activity of this state reflects activity outside the state,” Santos said. “I think that’s probably our greatest vulnerability in South Dakota, in the state’s sensitivity to economic activity outside the state.”

Pluses and minuses of low unemployment

South Dakota is in an unusual position when it comes to its employment picture.

According to state data, non-farm employment growth has risen sharply since hitting a 12-year low point during the height of the pandemic in 2020, when the state had about 350,000 people working. Since then, non-farm employment has risen to about 470,000 people working.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate in South Dakota, which was about 3.5% in 2014 and which rose to 8.5% during the pandemic, has now fallen to around 2%, according to state data. The national unemployment rate has followed a similar pattern, jumping to more than 14% in 2020 and now hovering around 4.5%.

All three economists interviewed by News Watch pointed to the low unemployment rate as a problem, though generally a good problem to have.

Santos called the low unemployment rate a “second-order problem” that is less impactful than high unemployment, which would make it hard for people who want to work to find jobs.

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But Santos also said an unemployment rate of 2% or lower could create a soft spot in the state economy.

“I think the downside is that the economic activity in the state is constrained by its inability to attract workers,” Santos said.

South Dakota economy by the numbers infobox

David Chicoine, a former president and economics professor at South Dakota State University, said economists across the country are trying to determine what level of unemployment is acceptable to sustain larger economic growth.

“The question that has come up since COVID and since the Great Recession, is what is the appropriate level of unemployment to have a robust economy?” he said. “Clearly, 2% is, in most people’s view, too low because that means you don’t have enough workers to take advantage of new opportunities and sustain long-term growth.”

Worker shortage a concern

The other, somewhat related, concerning data point is that the state had about 33,000 open jobs in mid-2023 and only 10,000 unemployed people, which Chicoine said can stunt productivity and growth in the business sector.

That gap exists even as the state has seen population growth of 1.5% in 2022 and more than 1% in 2023, both rates that outpaced national growth.

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“I still think the economy is going to grow, but at what pace?” he said. “If you’ve got more jobs than you have people, that’s going to put a constraint on the ability to grow because you’re just not going to be able to have the output of a stronger labor force.”

McEntaffer said the lack of workforce is largely due to the geography and demographics of South Dakota, which is a rural, low population state compared to other states.

Other than increasing innovation or raising productivity of individual workers, the only way to fill open jobs is to attract more people to the state, he said.

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“It is putting restrictions for businesses and consumers,” McEntaffer said. “We’re right to do what we can to attract people. It’s a strong economy, it’s a great place to live and all of that, and if we can get more people here, that will help alleviate some of those strains on the economy.”

General fund revenues

After two years of consistently steady growth in revenues, buoyed by billions in federal government stimulus money given to the state and local governments, businesses and individuals, revenue growth slowed in June.

In July, the state experienced a decline in revenues compared to legislative estimates. The June data shows an increase of just 0.4% over legislative estimates, and July saw a 3.7% negative growth figure, with a $9 million shortfall compared to legislative projections.

Canned groceries are lined up on shelves at a grocery store.
Even though the state economy overall has been strong in recent years, South Dakota consumers have undoubtedly noticed higher prices for food during a recent period of high inflation, including on April 25, 2024, at Maynard’s Food Center in DeSmet, S.D. (Photo: Bart Pfankuch / South Dakota News Watch)

Chicoine said the recent slowdown is not a major concern unless the trend continues.

“If we flatten out for the rest of the year, and we’re already down in the first month of the new fiscal year (July), we won’t know the full magnitude of any decline until we get there,” Chicoine said. “The negative growth that we saw suggests the downward trend could continue and accelerate.”

Housing prices and construction

South Dakota followed the national housing market fairly closely in recent years, especially in growth rate of home construction and prices.

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The home price indices, a broad measure of average home sale and resale prices, rose slowly in South Dakota and the U.S. from 2012 to 2021, then showed a significant price jump over the past three years.

Construction of new homes in South Dakota dipped to about 3,000 in 2019, then peaked at about 9,000 in 2022 and came down to about 4,000 in 2023 with a slight uptick since.

Santos said he believes the Federal Reserve Board has taken appropriate steps in regard to managing lending rates to reduce inflation and stave off a possible recession in the U.S. and in South Dakota.

Rising interest rates in recent years, followed by the recent lowering of rates, was appropriate, he said. The lower rates should now stimulate more residential and commercial development and sales activity that will bolster the overall economies of the state and nation, Santos said.

In their final analysis, all three economists said they see a positive economic future for South Dakota.

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Santos said he expects the state to continue to benefit from government policies that generally tend to be pro-business and pro-growth.

“There is a kind of a deregulatory, pro-free enterprise mindset in the state, and I suspect that’s a tailwind, not headwind,” he said. “There is a kind of a business-first orientation that if we have issues, let’s see if the private sector can deal with them first.”

This story was produced by South Dakota News Watch, an independent, nonprofit news organization. Read more in-depth stories at sdnewswatch.org and sign up for an email every few days to get stories as soon as they’re published. Contact Bart Pfankuch at bart.pfankuch@sdnewswatch.org.



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South Dakota

Matters of the State: Election Day Preview

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Matters of the State: Election Day Preview


SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) – This week on Matters of the State, we look ahead to Election Day.

South Dakota voters will be deciding on seven ballot measures, along with hundreds of candidates for local, state, and federal office.

Northern State University political science professor Jon Schaff joins us to discuss the ballot measure landscape and what an exodus of Republican lawmakers could mean for the upcoming legislative session.

We also sit down with political analyst Dave Price to break down the home stretch of the race for the White House and which battleground states could actually be in play.

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Matters of the State airs Sundays at 8:30 a.m. and 10:30 p.m. on KSFY, and 10 a.m. on KOTA.



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As presidential campaign rockets toward end, 7 big things that happened this weekend • South Dakota Searchlight

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As presidential campaign rockets toward end, 7 big things that happened this weekend • South Dakota Searchlight


WASHINGTON — On the final frantic Sunday of the presidential race, while Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at a Black church service in Michigan, former President Donald Trump told supporters at a Pennsylvania rally that he “shouldn’t have left” the White House after he lost the 2020 presidential election.

At a campaign rally at an airplane tarmac in Lititz, Pennsylvania, Trump again perpetuated the falsehood that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him and claimed that this year’s election would also be stolen because election results could take a while to be counted.

“These elections have to be decided by 9 o’clock, 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock on Tuesday night,” he said. “Bunch of crooked people.”

Election officials have warned that results could take days to finalize.

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The comments came as new polls showed good news for Harris. A highly regarded pollster in Iowa showed a shocking lead for Harris there and New York Times-Siena College polls of the seven major battleground states showed slight leads for Harris in some Sun Belt swing states, while Trump made gains in the Rust Belt.

As the campaign dwindles to its final hours, here are seven key developments from this weekend:

Trump says he ‘shouldn’t have left’ White House

Trump spent much of his Lititz rally complaining about the election process and media coverage, seeming to repeat his false claim that he was the rightful winner of the 2020 election.

“I shouldn’t have left, I mean, honestly,” Trump said. “We did so well, we had such a great — so now, every polling booth has hundreds of lawyers standing there.”

He also joked about shooters targeting reporters covering his event, the Pennsylvania Capital-Star reported.

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He pointed to protective glass covering him on two sides and noted a press section was on another side of him.

“To get me, someone would have to shoot through the fake news,” Trump said. “And I don’t mind that so much.”

In a statement that seemed to contradict the plain meaning of Trump’s remark, campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung denied Trump was encouraging violence against reporters.

“The President’s statement about protective glass placement has nothing to do with the Media being harmed, or anything else,” Cheung wrote. “It was about threats against him that were spurred on by dangerous rhetoric from Democrats. In fact, President Trump was stating that the Media was in danger, in that they were protecting him and, therefore, were in great danger themselves, and should have had a glass protective shield, also. There can be no other interpretation of what was said. He was actually looking out for their welfare, far more than his own!”

Harris heads to the Big Apple

Harris made an unscheduled trip to New York City Saturday, where she made a surprise appearance during the cold open of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” alongside actress Maya Rudolph, who portrays the veep in the live sketch comedy show.

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In the three-minute opener, Rudolph approaches a vanity dresser and wishes she could talk to “someone who was in my shoes” as a “Black, South Asian woman running for president, preferably from the Bay Area.”

Rudolph turns toward the faux mirror, and Harris, on the other side, responds, “You and me both, sister.”

They wore identical suits and Harris turned to Rudolph and said that she is “here to remind you, you got this.”

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“Because you can do something your opponent cannot do. You can open doors,” Harris said, joking about a recent campaign event where Trump tried to open the door to a garbage truck.

Rudolph cackled, doing an impersonation of Harris’ laugh, before the two women began a pep talk with puns of Harris’ first name.

“Now, Kamala, take my palmala,” Rudolph said. “The American people want to stop the chaos.”

“And end the dramala,” Harris said.

Harris and Rudolph then stood side-by-side and said they were going to vote for “us.”

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Harris joked and asked Rudolph if she was registered to vote in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.

Harris headed from New York to Michigan, where she spoke Sunday at the historically Black Greater Emmanuel Institutional Church of God in Christ in Detroit.

Polling bombshell in a non-swing state

Polling in the latest Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll, reported a shocking lead for Harris in a state that Trump easily won in 2016 and 2020, with women and independent voters breaking for the Democratic presidential nominee.

The poll shows Harris leading with 47% of likely voters compared to 44% with Trump, according to the Register.

The Trump campaign quickly called the Iowa poll “a clear outlier,” and instead cited a poll by Emerson College as accurate, which showed the former president having 53% support compared to 43% for Harris.

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Trump also took his grievances to his social media site, Truth Social.

“All polls, except for one heavily skewed toward the Democrats by a Trump hater who called it totally wrong the last time, have me up, BY A LOT,” he wrote. “I LOVE THE FARMERS, AND THEY LOVE ME.”

The New York Times/Siena College Sunday polls found that Harris is improving in North Carolina and Georgia while Trump has gained in Pennsylvania and maintains a strong advantage in Arizona. Harris is still ahead in Nevada and Wisconsin, according to the poll, but Michigan and Pennsylvania remain tied. The poll of Georgia showed Harris with a 1-point edge.

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Both candidates were within the polls’ margins of error, meaning that the seven swing states could tip to either candidate.

While both Democratic and Republican politicians have expressed confidence in winning the election, polling experts said during a panel hosted by the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute in late October there’s no way to know for sure who will control the White House until all the votes are counted.

Kristen Soltis Anderson, founding partner at Echelon Insights, said there’s about a 60% chance that this year’s nationwide polling has been mostly correct, though she emphasized that the people who focus their careers on political polling are dedicated to providing a realistic understanding of where campaigns are headed.

“We are trying our very hardest to get it right,” Anderson said. “Even if you don’t believe in our altruism or even if you don’t believe in our academic and intellectual integrity, believe in nothing else than our financial incentives. You want to be the pollster who was right. It is very good business to be the pollster who is right.”

Jeff Horwitt, partner at Hart Research, said during the panel his firm has wrapped up its polling for this election year and expressed skepticism about the polls that emerge close to Election Day.

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“Because our job, for our political clients, is to tell them the contours of the election,” Horwitt said. “How do we convince voters to vote for our candidate? What are the most effective messages? What do we have to think about? So the public polls are seeing now, they’re super interesting, and they’re important, but they’re not actionable.”

Trump welcomes sexist insult

As Trump spent his weekend in a campaign blitz across North Carolina, he welcomed a sexist remark from a rallygoer in Greensboro who suggested that Harris worked as a prostitute.

During the Saturday night rally, Trump questioned whether Harris’ previously worked at a McDonald’s. Her campaign has stated that she worked the summer job in 1983. In a campaign photo opportunity, Trump visited a closed McDonald’s in Pennsylvania where he handed fries to pre-screened people at the drive through.

“It’s so simple,” Trump said. “She’s a significant liar, and when you lie about something so simple, so she never worked there –”

“She worked on a corner,” a man from the crowd shouted.

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Trump laughed at the crude comment.

“This place is amazing,” Trump said. “Just remember, it’s other people saying it, it’s not me.”

Harris has significantly gained support with women, according to the Pew Research Center. Trump has often dismissed criticism that he has lagged among women.

During a rally last week in Wisconsin, and in an attempt to win over women voters, Trump said that he would protect women and “I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not.”

Trump repeats ‘father of fertilization’ claim

At a Greensboro, North Carolina, rally Saturday, Trump again called himself “the father of fertilization,” a title he first gave himself during a Fox News town hall with women voters last month.

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“I consider myself to be the father of fertilization,” he said Saturday.

The Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, speaks at a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City on Oct. 27, 2024. (Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)
The Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, speaks at a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City on Oct. 27, 2024. (Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

The Iowa poll — and other late surveys — showed a stark gender gap, with women voters increasingly preferring Harris.

Nearly twice as many Iowa independent women voters, 57% to 29%, favored Harris. That represents a major gain for Harris since a September survey by the same pollster showed the vice president’s edge with independent women was only 5 percentage points.

Democrats have sought to exploit their advantage with women voters by emphasizing Trump’s record on abortion access. The former president appointed three of the U.S. Supreme Court justices who voted in 2022 to overturn the federal right to an abortion.

A flurry of state-level policymaking on reproductive rights has followed, including restrictions on in vitro fertilization, a common fertility treatment.

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Trump has said he opposed an Alabama Supreme Court ruling that outlawed the treatment in the state, but had not previously taken a position on the issue.

Early voters up to 76 million

More than 76 million voters had already cast ballots through early and mail voting by midday Sunday, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab.

Roughly half of those have come in states that track voters’ partisanship. About 700,000 — roughly 2% of the total — more Democrats have voted in those states than Republicans, but the numbers include California, where Democrat Joe Biden won more than 5 million more votes than Trump in the 2020 election.

Among the six states — Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Colorado, Idaho and Virginia — that track voters’ gender, women accounted for 54% of the vote, compared to 43.6% for men.

‘Election eve’ blitz

The candidates for president and vice president plan to sprint across the key swing states in the campaign’s final days, with particular focus on Pennsylvania, the largest of the contested states where polling has shown a deadlocked race.

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The Harris campaign announced Sunday the vice president would be in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia on Monday, the night before Election Day, for rallies and musical performances. Scheduled entertainers and speakers included Oprah Winfrey, The Roots, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry.

Harris is also set to hold an event in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a majority-Latino city, on Monday. Part of Harris’ closing message has highlighted racist comments Trump and his supporters have made about Latinos.

After spending much of the weekend in North Carolina, Trump will also hold a rally in Pittsburgh on Monday evening.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, will be in Milwaukee on Monday.

Trump running mate Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance will hold events in Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania on Monday.

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Harris will hold an election night watch party at her alma mater, Howard University, in Washington, D.C.

Trump’s watch party will be at his Mar-a-Lago club in West Palm Beach, Florida.

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

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SD convicts 2 inmates of attempted murder, assault on correctional officers

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SD convicts 2 inmates of attempted murder, assault on correctional officers


A jury has convicted two inmates of assaulting two correctional officers in 2023 at the South Dakota State Penitentiary, according to a press release Friday from the South Dakota Attorney General’s office.

Lester M. Monroe, 49, and Kyle Jones, 31, were found guilty of attempted first degree murder of a law enforcement officer and aggravated assault of a Department of Corrections employee, the release states. Jones was also found guilty of one count of simple assault of a Department of Corrections employee.

The two found guilty by a Minnehaha Circuit Court Jury after a week-long trial Friday. Sentencing is expected at a later date.

They face a possible maximum sentence of 100 years because of their current status as prisoners at the time of the crimes, the release states.

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“This was a violent assault on two of our correctional officers, including one officer who was struck more than 70 times, doing their job,”Attorney General Marty Jackley stated in the release. “Violence in the prison will not be tolerated, and offenders will be held accountable.”

The Aug. 24, 2023 incident happened at the Jameson Annex, Unit D, in Sioux Falls. The officers were medically treated and then released.

Monroe was already serving time for simple assault on law enforcement out of Minnehaha County, and receiving or transferring a stolen vehicle out of Bennett County, the release states. Meanwhile, Jones had been serving time for several crimes out of Minnehaha County, including first degree manslaughter, eluding a police officer and unauthorized ingestion of a controlled substance, the release states.

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