Here's a fact about the labor market we South Dakotans might have trouble grasping: nationwide, rural unemployment is higher than urban unemployment. Rural watchdog Daily Yonder provides this map:
In February, urban (or metropolitan) unemployment stood at 8 percent, according to data released Wednesday (April 10, 2013) by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In so-called micropolitan counties — those with cities between 10,000 and 50,000 — unemployment in February stood at 8.5 percent. And in rural counties with towns below 10,000, the unemployment rate was 8.9 percent [Bill Bishop, "Rural Unemployment Surpasses Urban Rate," Daily Yonder, 2013.04.15].
South Dakota and much of the Great Plains look like glaring exceptions to that phenomenon. Across South Dakota, unemployment sat at a nonseasonally adjusted 4.9% in February. The only counties exceeding the national average are Indian Country, where the official unemployment rates are more indicative of national conditions and where the situation is much worse when you count the high percentage of adults not in the workforce.
The Great Plains derives this advantage in part from one dismaying statistic: lower population growth. Job growth may not be great here, but with population flat or dwindling in our rural counties, fewer people are competing for the jobs that do come up.
But compare urban to rural within South Dakota, and we find a slight urban jobs advantage as well. Our two biggest cities, Sioux Falls and Rapid City, had total unemployment of 4.7% in February, two ticks below the state average. Unemployment in our eleven largest cities and towns, from Sioux Falls to Spearfish, was 4.8% in February. Our big towns outperform our small towns in putting people to work.
These data suggest that the Governor's Office of Economic Development needs to pay a little more attention to creating jobs in our rural counties instead of doling out all of its favors to the big towns.
Awesome map, Cory: looks like more evidence for creation of the Greater Missouri Basin National Wildlife Refuge.
Way back in the 1960's there was an musical album I bought (and still own) called "California '99". It was a series of songs about an apocolytic scenario 30+ years in the future. The green colored rural counties depicted in this map were designated almost identically on a map on the cover of that album as the "Marijuana and Insect Belt" - as that was all that would grow there. It also predicted that insects would be a major componenet of America - errr - Californian diet. The region from Boston to DC had seceded from California and was a separate country called "Boswash". Very interetsting
The Great Plains derives this advantage in part from one dismaying statistic: lower population growth.
Dismaying? Why? Must everything always grow larger?
I've been straining all five of my brain cells over the past few days on the issue of who, and what, South Dakota might want to "recruit."
Then I asked myself, "Why should we try to 'recruit' anybody?"
What sort of place are we now, what sort of place do we want to become, and can we keep our goals in consonance with certain hard and unalternable facts such as our climate and topography?
The other day on Faux News, Sean Hannity (Rachel Maddow's twin anti-particle) remarked that maybe, just maybe, conservative states don't want to have all those urban elites come in and turn the red to purple.
Hmmm ... Maybe we should just stay provincial, right-wing, and down-home, and let all those urban centers, whatever their other characteristics, keep their ways while we keep ours.
After living in Miami and Los Angeles, I can say that I feel no compulsion to recruit people from those places to come and live here. In fact I'd just as soon most of them stay away.
But don't tell them to say away. Then they'll come and bring all their bad behaviors with them.
Harumph! I say, let's stay small. Endless growth is not sustainable anyway ... bah! Humbug!
These data suggest that the Governor's Office of Economic Development needs to pay a little more attention to creating jobs in our rural counties instead of doling out all of its favors to the big towns.
Maybe private enterprise should start paying attention to rural South Dakota, as well, you know, those endless flats scoured by wind and bleached by sun.
Let some private companies "see the light" and "feel the breeze" and put up wind and solar farms here. That'd create some jobs, eh?
Since when is it the government's responsibility to create jobs in a supposedly free enterprise society?
Actually when I look at the map I think we need money back from that poor investment referred to in history books as the Louisiana Purchase.
The Louisiana Purchase was likely an extra-constitutional move by President Jefferson to prevent France from seizing the Mississippi River: the superhighway of its era. The action was argued as a national security issue.
http://www.jeffersonhour.com/
Praise be to Jefferson. He bought a big chunk of land from the French.
Jefferson himself believed it was not within his power to execute the purchase that eventually led to the Trail of Tears.
Richard Schriever that is some great album art.
http://ironleg.wordpress.com/2010/02/28/the-sounds-of-the-millennium-2-california-99-preludeto-claudia-on-thursday/
The blindman
Nonetheless. Gnashing about it now doesn't change the purchase. Now I own a chunk. So do you.
Stan, it is always the government's responsibility to create jobs. Think of the military, think of the FBI, think of the folks that land the planes or the regulators that watch how the nuke plants are run. No matter how you despise the government, you, and I mean you, have received or are still receiving some kind of government assistance. This is not such a bad thing as whatever it is you are getting, someone is getting paid to give it to you. That is how it works and has always worked.
If the roads need fixed, who ya gonna call? If the electricity goes off, then what, are you going to sit in the dark and watch your ice creame melt? What about the water you drink? The meat and tatters you love so much, those are inspected you know. If we all had to wait for you to decide to do something productive, well, we all would be waiting. No come on down from that ivory tower and just acknowledge that there really is not very many choices for our young people or for that matter, any people to find a job that pays enough to be able to go to it.
I'm with Mr. Gibilisco. You like it here then great. You don't, well OK for you, Mr. Fargen has an apartment to rent you. But we shouldn't try and attract derelicts here.
Curious how Meade and Custer were determined to be metro counties.
Vast undocumented indigenous populations, or French math.
Oh, Stan! You prick my Kirkpatrick-Sale-ian conscience. I get so wrapped up in moving in the worldview that surrounds me and runs the state ("O.K., you guys, if that's what you really want, then why don't you...") that I sometimes forget that the initial assumptions ("We need more people, more jobs, more GDP") may be all wrong.
But arguing for a forever-small South Dakota is economic suicide, isn't it? Aren't a lot of rural communities unsustainably small and in need of some growth to provide the minimum economic and cultural energy necessary to make the charm of living their outweigh the burden?
Stan is not trying to raise children with one of the lowest wage rates in the country. He has explained his income comes from outside, so he's higher up the ladder by living in a depressed state with no income tax. Unless the continent splits and South Dakota gets balmy there's not much worry about reverse migration.
Stan has acknowledged his anamolous status. He raises the question of whether South Dakota can sustain itself by catering to outliers. Would that make us like Alaska?
Stan is saying leave it alone. His overriding concern is not to pay taxes so he's benefiting from the status quo. If the tax situation changed he would be gone tomorrow which is hardly a way to plan the state.