Everyone has heard stories about the shale-oil boom towns that are transforming North Dakota, for better and worse. "Man camps" for oil-field workers, jobs for anyone who can work a rig or drive a truck, social distortionslike those of the Klondike. You know the stories, and the town of Williston ND (where we've not yet visited, but plan to), with the orange dot in the upper left-hand corner of the map above, is a frequent dateline for them.
Have you ever stopped to wonder why you don't hear these stories about South Dakota? The map at the top offers a clue. It shows "shale plays," or active and prospective shale-gas mining areas, as defined by the U.S. Department of Energy. A little tongue of the Gammon Play laps into South Dakota, versus the huge Bakken Play that is spread over North Dakota.
The map shows a larger view of shale basins, with potentially exploitable reserves, in the plains states. South Dakota includes almost none of the Williston Basin (pink) to the north, the Powder River Basin (tan) to the west, or the Denver Basin (a poppyish color) to the south.
So how, then, can South Dakota be any kind of boom state on a par with North Dakota? Especially the state's most populous city, Sioux Falls, which is in the far southeastern corner of the state (green pin) and much closer to Iowa and Minnesota than to any point in North Dakota?
What my wife and I have seen in Sioux Falls this summer, and will try to itemize, is a combination of ingredients that have together produced a genuine economic strength quite different from a shale-oil boom and potentially more instructive for the country as a whole. The unemployment rate in greater Sioux Falls now is around 3.5% -- about the average for the state as a whole. (That give South Dakota overall the second-lowest unemployment rate in the country. For number one, you could go to the BLS site -- or just take a wild guess, based on the maps above.) Our Marketplace partners kicked off a series of coverage of the Sioux Falls economy last week.
