Sept. 1, 2022

With an unemployment rate of 1.7 percent in July, the Sioux Falls metro area was among seven areas with the lowest jobless rate in the country.

For the Sioux Falls MSA, that’s the lowest the rate has been since July 2020.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the six other areas with a 1.7 percent jobless rate were Fargo; Mankato and Rochester, Minnesota; Burlington, Vermont; Logan, Utah; and Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

The local unemployment rate for July, which isn’t seasonally adjusted, represents 2,776 residents in the four-county MSA who do not have jobs, have actively looked for one in the past four weeks and are available to work. It also includes those who have been laid off temporarily.

In June, the jobless rate was 2.1 percent, according to statistics from the South Dakota Department of Labor & Regulation.

The total labor force for the Sioux Falls MSA, those who are employed and unemployed, was 165,449 in July, down from 166,119 in June.

A year ago, the metro area jobless rate was 2.4 percent, with 3,953 people who were unemployed out of a labor force of 161,445.

Nonfarm wage and salaried worker levels in the metro area were unchanged from June to July, remaining at 169,500 people. The category of financial activities saw the biggest increase at 2 percent, a gain of 300 workers from June.

Government saw the sharpest decline at 7 percent, a loss of 1,100 workers compared with June.

Compared with a year ago, nonfarm wage and salaried worker levels were up 3.3 percent in the Sioux Falls area.

In the MSA, which includes Minnehaha, Lincoln, McCook and Turner counties, there were 22,168 job openings in July, according to the state’s virtual labor market data system, which pulls in information from online job postings. That compares with 15,426 openings a year ago.

The statewide unemployment rate for July, which is seasonally adjusted, remained unchanged at 2.3 percent.

July’s rate represents 10,800 people who do not have jobs, have actively looked for one in the past four weeks and are available to work, along with those laid off temporarily, according to the state Labor Department. A year ago, the rate was 3.2 percent, and there were 15,100 unemployed South Dakotans.

The statewide labor force has grown in the past year from 469,100 to 478,100.

The national unemployment rate in July dropped to 3.5 percent from 3.6 percent in June. A year ago, it was 5.4 percent.