Monday's post on personal income growth got me looking at patterns of commuter inflow and outflow in South Dakota. Commuter inflow is the income folks from, say, Lake County, bring home from their jobs in Minnehaha. Commuter outflow is the income commuters like my prof at DSU makes at work in Lake but then takes home to Minnehaha. Net flow is simply inflow minus outflow. If your county has positive net flow, that means the commuters who live in your county are bringing more income into the county than commuters to your county from elsewhere are taking out.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis calculates net commuter income flow by county (see BEA's Table CA-91). I took their data and calculated what I'm calling a "flow-to-opportunity" ratio. Opportunity here is the total income generated by jobs in a given county, regardless of whether the jobs are done by locals or commuters. BEA gives toal personal income (TPI) for each county; subtract the net flow (watch your negative signs!) and you get opportunity.
The following map breaks South Dakota's counties into rough quintiles by flow-to-opportunity ratio. Gold means lots of commuters working elsewhere and bringing cash home. Blue means lots of out-of-towners coming to a county to work but living elsewhere. All data are from 2009, the most recent county data available.
The following table gives specific numbers for each county (all figures are thousands of dollars, from 2009):
| County | 2009 inflow | outflow | net flow | total personal income | NF/(TPI-NF) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lincoln | 1,027,006 | 168,223 | 858,783 | 2,061,794 | 71.4% |
| Stanley | 44,866 | 18,692 | 26,174 | 114,446 | 29.7% |
| McCook | 61,140 | 17,658 | 43,482 | 231,231 | 23.2% |
| Turner | 94,370 | 26,941 | 67,429 | 376,747 | 21.8% |
| Meade | 268,222 | 112,499 | 155,723 | 877,557 | 21.6% |
| Moody | 59,480 | 16,983 | 42,497 | 264,508 | 19.1% |
| Mellette | 9,854 | 1,411 | 8,443 | 53,065 | 18.9% |
| Hamlin | 41,460 | 9,358 | 32,102 | 202,060 | 18.9% |
| Ziebach | 9,095 | 1,413 | 7,682 | 52,442 | 17.2% |
| Hanson | 31,435 | 7,387 | 24,048 | 167,427 | 16.8% |
| Sanborn | 20,333 | 4,501 | 15,832 | 113,148 | 16.3% |
| Bennett | 13,502 | 1,586 | 11,916 | 90,672 | 15.1% |
| Custer | 43,884 | 8,615 | 35,269 | 270,036 | 15.0% |
| Edmunds | 29,146 | 5,489 | 23,657 | 196,255 | 13.7% |
| Butte | 44,728 | 10,078 | 34,650 | 287,918 | 13.7% |
| Corson | 14,610 | 4,798 | 9,812 | 112,491 | 9.6% |
| Aurora | 16,198 | 5,833 | 10,365 | 119,316 | 9.5% |
| Sully | 9,333 | 2,499 | 6,834 | 78,740 | 9.5% |
| Kingsbury | 30,679 | 11,392 | 19,287 | 236,251 | 8.9% |
| Bon Homme | 27,322 | 10,632 | 16,690 | 231,223 | 7.8% |
| Deuel | 27,199 | 15,275 | 11,924 | 166,843 | 7.7% |
| Clark | 12,578 | 2,956 | 9,622 | 137,483 | 7.5% |
| Roberts | 33,435 | 11,641 | 21,794 | 325,567 | 7.2% |
| McPherson | 6,885 | 1,818 | 5,067 | 87,180 | 6.2% |
| Lake | 44,811 | 18,954 | 25,857 | 449,771 | 6.1% |
| Clay | 68,999 | 40,920 | 28,079 | 546,648 | 5.4% |
| Miner | 10,611 | 5,355 | 5,256 | 108,577 | 5.1% |
| Campbell | 3,699 | 1,114 | 2,585 | 53,484 | 5.1% |
| Lyman | 13,423 | 7,762 | 5,661 | 126,904 | 4.7% |
| Brule | 16,889 | 9,205 | 7,684 | 208,576 | 3.8% |
| Hutchinson | 27,635 | 16,321 | 11,314 | 312,339 | 3.8% |
| Day | 14,086 | 6,925 | 7,161 | 200,874 | 3.7% |
| Faulk | 4,552 | 1,069 | 3,483 | 105,957 | 3.4% |
| Hand | 5,429 | 2,159 | 3,270 | 149,278 | 2.2% |
| Douglas | 9,141 | 6,463 | 2,678 | 130,416 | 2.1% |
| Haakon | 3,436 | 1,952 | 1,484 | 83,830 | 1.8% |
| Spink | 16,321 | 11,332 | 4,989 | 356,315 | 1.4% |
| Gregory | 4,355 | 2,590 | 1,765 | 164,684 | 1.1% |
| Beadle | 27,120 | 20,463 | 6,657 | 712,477 | 0.9% |
| Jackson | 6,074 | 5,483 | 591 | 74,205 | 0.8% |
| Tripp | 6,354 | 5,157 | 1,197 | 197,166 | 0.6% |
| Jones | 1,259 | 1,025 | 234 | 38,586 | 0.6% |
| Potter | 3,397 | 2,770 | 627 | 120,885 | 0.5% |
| Walworth | 6,390 | 5,652 | 738 | 180,935 | 0.4% |
| Harding | 1,100 | 1,473 | -373 | 39,785 | -0.9% |
| Marshall | 12,814 | 14,597 | -1,783 | 140,704 | -1.3% |
| Lawrence | 70,967 | 84,593 | -13,626 | 811,093 | -1.7% |
| Charles Mix | 6,694 | 12,427 | -5,733 | 326,105 | -1.7% |
| Brown | 16,704 | 57,739 | -41,035 | 1,586,913 | -2.5% |
| Perkins | 1,286 | 3,800 | -2,514 | 91,613 | -2.7% |
| Union | 186,194 | 209,812 | -23,618 | 764,981 | -3.0% |
| Hyde | 3,048 | 4,383 | -1,335 | 41,369 | -3.1% |
| Fall River | 15,807 | 23,472 | -7,665 | 233,477 | -3.2% |
| Grant | 16,982 | 27,419 | -10,437 | 284,687 | -3.5% |
| Brookings | 54,009 | 94,146 | -40,137 | 1,083,829 | -3.6% |
| Codington | 23,958 | 61,984 | -38,026 | 975,982 | -3.8% |
| Dewey | 2,803 | 11,160 | -8,357 | 166,677 | -4.8% |
| Pennington | 110,310 | 310,136 | -199,826 | 3,779,937 | -5.0% |
| Hughes | 22,334 | 61,956 | -39,622 | 705,953 | -5.3% |
| Yankton | 32,872 | 83,443 | -50,571 | 792,104 | -6.0% |
| Davison | 19,475 | 72,656 | -53,181 | 793,581 | -6.3% |
| Todd | 3,678 | 23,974 | -20,296 | 197,679 | -9.3% |
| Jerauld | 6,862 | 19,330 | -12,468 | 97,807 | -11.3% |
| Minnehaha | 299,822 | 1,473,839 | -1,174,017 | 6,796,310 | -14.7% |
| Shannon | 2,268 | 47,290 | -45,022 | 250,651 | -15.2% |
| Buffalo | 2,186 | 12,089 | -9,903 | 36,652 | -21.3% |
| total | 3,182,914 | 3,362,067 | -179,153 | 31,174,196 | -0.6% |
What do these numbers tell us about where we live and work in South Dakota? These numbers fit what I found looking at similar data a couple years ago: big communities support surrounding small communities. Consider Minnehaha County, our outflow champ. Sioux Falls residents driving elsewhere for work bring just under $300 million back to town, but folks from Harrisburg, Lennox, Montrose, Chester, and Madison pull $1.47 billion out of Sioux Falls and the rest of Minnehaha County. jobs in Pennington and Lawrence counties, support a lot of commuters from Butte, Meade, and Custer counties.
The West River reservations show a similar trend, with income flowing from higher population areas to lower population areas. Shannon County (Pine Ridge) and Todd County (Rosebud) support a number of commuters who appear to live off-reservation in Bennett and Mellette counties. Much less income enters Shannon and Todd counties from locals working elsewhere. That may fit with a comment Mr. Kurtz left yesterday: commuting costs money, and folks in Shannon and Todd, two of the poorest counties in the nation, have much less freedom to hop in the car everyday and drive to work somewhere else. But there just may be a lot more jobs available for commuting workers on Pine Ridge and Rosebud: Shannon and Todd are much more populous (13,586 and 9612) than Bennett and Mellette (3431 and 2048).
Income flow on the Cheyenne River Reservation remains within the boundaries of the reservation. Ziebach on the west side enjoys a strong positive net flow, while Dewey sees strong negative net flow. The population-net flow trend on the reservation holds: Dewey has a larger population than Ziebach (5301 to 2801).
Now go figure this one out: South Dakota as a whole experiences a slight negative net flow. Add up the net flows, and you get a net negative $179 million. That's only 0.6% of our $31.4 billion in total income opportunity, but it still means there's a slight surplus of income earned by folks who think South Dakota's a nice place to work but not the place they choose to live. Check the data, form your geographical own hypotheses!
The Crow have embraced public transportation to maximize its resources: http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/article_57674532-bf34-5e05-9d98-307727710c72.html
District 30 is ripe for a change in attitude about commuting to the VA in Hot Springs from Pine Ridge, for example. Where has Lance Russell been on facillitating that while his mother makes money from the sale of leases to Powertech?
The slight ouflow is the same reason Minnehaha supports the surrounding counties in South Dakota- It attracts a few people from Minnesota and Iowa. The only real offset to this is South Dakotans who work in Sioux City.
I wondered about exactly that, Troy. Sioux Falls and Yankton are the only major population centers right on the border in SD. And Troy, your're right: Sioux City is the only border-state city positioned to offset such outflows with job opportunities.
We clearly see Minnehaha and Yankton supporting surrounding areas with net negative income flow. Sure enough, Knox County, Neb., across the bridge from Yankton, sees net positive flow of $19.4 million. East from Sioux Falls, Lyon County, Iowa, sees net positive flow of $65 million, and Rock County, MN, sees positive $39.7 million.
But check out the Sioux City area. Woodbury County, which has most of Sioux City, has net negative flow of $58 million, a remarkably small number compared to Minnehaha's outflow of $1.2 billion, even factoring in different population. Plymouth County, which includes North Sioux City, swamps that with a net inflow of $91 million. If Union County is drawing any of Sioux City's income, they're losing much more elsewhere, since Union County's net flow is negative, $23 million. And Dakota County, Neb., with the packing plant and such in S. Sioux City has net negative flow of $93 million. (Anyone care to vounteer to color these flows on a map of the entire country?)