I have said all along, that even though people (claim) the recession hit SD later it will last longer here. These numbers are pathetic;
About 38 percent of children in South Dakota are living in poverty, up sharply from 14 percent in 2001, according to new statistics released Tuesday.
The state’s reaction is even more pathetic considering they are more worried about illegal immigrants coming to SD;
Neither the governor’s office, Department of Health Secretary Doneen Hollingsworth nor Department of Social Services Secretary Deb Bowman would comment on South Dakota’s plummeting rank.
And it really comes down to jobs;
Beaver said the solution to the child poverty problem lies in creating employment opportunities for South Dakota parents. “The bottom line are jobs, jobs and more jobs,” Beaver said. Even if jobs are created, the situation won’t get better unless parents can prosper in them, Randall said. “(Economic conditions) will, to some extent, trail the national economy,” Randall said. “But a lot of it depends on our own state’s economic development efforts and the extent to which we go after jobs that are solid, well-paying jobs.”
Kinda sounds like our ‘cheap labor’ mantra has come to bite us in the ass.
i am waiting for someone to state how cheap labor and low wages are actually beneficial.
Fine…I’ll jump in.
Last time you went to Wal Mart, what did you buy and where was it made?
Good one Sy, but that’s more national than local.
It can’t be that bad, the mayor is paying himself a $56,000 performance bonus.
Are you saying Wal-Mart has had no impact on our local economy?
I know you like being provocative, but seriously?
The story had the wrong number. It’s actually at 18% right now and not 38%. The Argus story has been corrected.
The information is also from 2008, so the current recession has no impact on the data.
Lastly, the percentage of kids living in poverty in the US in 2008 was 19% (according to the US HHS), so it seems that South Dakota is actually a little bit ahead of the curve at 18%. Not exactly stellar, but not the foreshadowing of the apocalypse that Susan Randall is trying to make it out to be.
Talk about shoddy reporting. They screwed up the percentage (by a huge margin) and didn’t even check out the information handed to them by South Dakota Voices for Children to make sure it was true.
I’ll also point out that it’s not exactly an even comparison to use the same poverty threshold for people in South Dakota and people living in other states. It’s a lot cheaper to live in SD. Often, a child living in on the edge of poverty in SD has a much higher standard of living than people that are above the poverty line in other states.
The percentage “living in poverty” isn’t exactly an accurate indicator of how many people are truly living in poverty.
It’s a lot cheaper to live in SD.
~ddc???
LMFAO. Half the 133,000 jobs in this town pay less than $14.00 an hour. Many of them with no bennies cuz they are only “part-time”. I don’t know where you come from, but to me, that’s poverty level wages. Have you priced housing, utilities, daycare, groceries, in SF lately?
Sy. If you still had a union shop and were paying $30.00 an hour on average, how long would you be in business if you tacked on another $15.00 an hour for a pension plan and another $5.00 an hour for ‘fringe” benefits?
Correction.
Sy. If you still had a union shop and were paying $30.00 an hour on average, how long would you be in business if you tacked on another $11.00 an hour for a pension plan and another $5.00 an hour for ‘fringe†benefits?
I lived in Florida for almost 7 years. It’s a lot cheaper to live in South Dakota, trust me.
I know that people who have never lived anywhere but SD like to whine about how low the wages are and how terrible it is here, but life isn’t so wonderful everywhere else.
Do you honestly think it’s just as expensive to live in Sioux Falls as it is in NYC? LA? Orlando? Chicago? I can find a safe place to live in Sioux Falls for less than $500/month. You can buy a decent house in a decent neighborhood for less than $100,000. The same can’t be said for most other areas of the country.
$14/hour is not poverty level wages. If that’s your definition of poverty (especially in Sioux Falls, SD), you need to take the silver spoon out of your mouth so you can see how most people live.
I used to work in a staffing service in Sioux Falls, and people would come in looking for work that had relocated here from the Cities, Chicago, etc., because they were under the assumption that the cost of living was less here. They were quite upset because of what they had to pay for housing here compared to the wages. Also the fact that the bus service didn’t cover enough area, and that they didn’t run Sundays and holidays, and other hours that a lot of people had to work in order to have some income. One lady showed me a picture of house that she had been renting in a suburb of one of the cities and the outside looked real nice, and she said she was paying a couple hundred less a month for that than what a similar one here was. I realize there are some places that the cost of living is higher than here, but then on the other hand I’m sure these people that came into the staffing service knew what they were talking about.
Chicago’s cost of living is 27% higher than Sioux Falls. MSP area is almost 19%. Those are facts.
There’s more to cost of living than just rent. I will still challenge you to find an apartment/house in the Chicago metro area that you would feel safe living in for $500 that would be comparable to one you would find in Sioux Falls . I can find hundreds in Sioux Falls without much effort (I’d feel safe in any Sioux Falls Neighborhood).
Chicago’s per capita income was $20,175 in 1999 )last census figures available). Sioux Falls had a per capita income of $21,374 the same year.
Illinois has an income tax of 3% (currently, but they want to raise it to 5% next year). They also levy a sales tax between a minimum of 6.25% and 11.5%. Chicago’s sales tax is mostly 9.75% for most things (just dropped, but still the highest of any major US city) and is incredibly complicated with all kinds of variations depending on the product.
Sioux Fall’s electricity rate is 8.54 cents/kWh. Chicago’s is 13.9 cents/kWh. Take your electricity bill and add 50% to it and you’ll get what they pay in Chicago.
Double your natural gas bill.
Gasoline is about 10 cents higher in Illinois and higher than that in the Chicago area.
A 30 day bus pass for Chicago costs $86 (and that doesn’t get you out west of O’Hare, north of Skokie, south of 95th or much of the Chicago suburbs) . You’ve also got a longer walk to get to stations than you would in Sioux Falls. You can get 4 10-ride tickets for $34 in Sioux Falls. You can take the $52 in saving and get a taxi on the days that the buses don’t run. Or better yet, ask your neighbor for a ride.
Please, keep trying to convince me that Sioux Falls is a cesspool of poverty.
There are benefits to living in Sioux Falls, but they are not economical, that is for damn sure.
What are they, then?
Do you honestly think it’s just as expensive to live in Sioux Falls as it is in NYC? LA? Orlando? Chicago?
You’re comparing aples to oranges. Apples to apples? It is cheaper to live in cities of comparable size in the breadbasket of America. Green Bay, Tulsa, Salina, Sioux City, Lincoln…Columbus Ohio….just to name a few.
$14/hour is not poverty level wages. If that’s your definition of poverty (especially in Sioux Falls, SD), you need to take the silver spoon out of your mouth so you can see how most people live.
I said LESS than $14.00 an hour. In fact 33,777 jobs, or a quarter of ALL the jobs in SF pay LESS than $10.62 an hour. Even at $14.00 an hour, I cannot imagine a young working couple, both at that wage, with two kids, surviving in this town. Paint this town as a mecca for for wages ddc, I’ll paint it for what it is. A mecca for dead end jobs.
What are they, then?
Drinking. Gambling. Put the order any way you like.
Low crime. Great parks system. Good friends.
There’s a definite have and have-nots barrier in SF that’s not so evident in other cities. Lloyd companies control rents and there’s no established housing subsidy system. The quality of life is good because there’s low crime and the working poor find cheap entertainment resources. I wouldn’t say parks are that great. Their budget is extreme and it gets spent mostly on McKennon park.
Sy, yes Walmart has affected here but much like it has everywhere. Yes, it’s a bad impact that’s ruined many small businesses.
SF has a unique industry that’s bad if not worse. Call centers harvest the best minds and put them in cubicle pens at low pay with unsatisfactory benefits and shared monkey crappers.
If you want to make it here, marry or use nepotism to get into a city job where pay and benefits are superior. A third of city employees live out of town not only because they can afford the gas and a cadillac but because taxes are lower and democracy prevails.
If you want to make it here, marry or use nepotism to get into a city job where pay and benefits are superior.
Not all city jobs are a gravy train. Just most of em. Pay is one thing. Getting paid more than their counterpart in the real world is one thing, but the bennies, the part that any city employee will never share the details of is where the gravy is.
A working couple earning $10.62/hour are making the national average. Again, you have no idea what poverty really is.
The reason I listed NYC and those other cities is because you challenged me on my assertion that you can’t compare poverty between Sioux Falls and other places using the HHS’s poverty threshold. You quoted my statement that it’s a lot cheaper to live in SD than it is to live in a lot of other places.
Thanks for agreeing with me that it’s and apples to oranges comparison.
Green Bay’s cost of living is almost identical to Sioux Fall’s. Sioux City’s a craphole with a much lower per-capita income than Sioux Falls and Tulsa is a cesspool of crime.
I’m not saying that Sioux Falls is a mecca for wages (whatever that means), what I’m saying is that it isn’t nearly as bad as you are trying to make it out to be.
Tulsa is a cesspool of crime
I used to work there. Not so much on your claim – at least not that I noticed on the news or through personal experience. I found it to be clean, safe, and home to a good music and art scene.
It is also a great place to start a career. Several large companies there actually pay a good salary to people right out of undergrad. That’s “salary”, not an hourly wage like every place around here pays.
SF is great if you’re not an entry-level graduate and have some management experience. It’s also a great place to be a good sales person. It’s an absolutely shitty place to be an entry-level employee with a pile of student loans.
Tulsa’s crime rate is 1.5x the national average.
DDC-
Are you employed or do you have your own business? If you do, do you have employees? How much do you pay them?
Had always heard how “expensoive” it was to loive in California before I moved there. Found it was true – pretty much double to SD.
Had NEVER heard how much more money one could earn in CA doing the SAME JOB as in SD. That too though turned out to be true. In fact, the first hjob I got in CA – doing the SAME WORK I had in SD paid 3X more. My end result was a NET of 2X more for the same work.
I had a construction job in CA for a time as a hesavy equip operator @ $54/hr. Few years later I got same job in SF for a few months, and the business felt they were pushing the high end of the envelope to pay me $18/hr. (precisely 1/3 the CA rate for same work/job) So that axiom still holds true.
Yes, it is cheaper to live in SD – at the gross level – but at the NET level it is more profitable to live in CA. I can only imagine it’s true in other locales as well.
” DDC-
Are you employed or do you have your own business? If you do, do you have employees? How much do you pay them?”
Currently work as an only employee for a small business and operate my own side-business with no employees.
Not sure why that matters…
I’ll also point out that Sioux Falls has grown about 27% in the last 10 years. Compare that to the Twin Cities’ 10%, Tulsa’s 8%, Lincoln’s 11%, Salinas’ 2%, Green Bay’s 8%, Columbus’ 12% and Sioux City’s .9%.
I guess most people think it’s a pretty alright place that they can make enough money to enjoy a good quality of life.
Just curious, because I do the same thing. As a server I am a ‘salesperson’ so I work on commission and actually ‘pay’ my employer to work there. Which is weird, but not uncommon. I just wish there wasn’t so much ass-ridding.
DDC
“A working couple earning $10.62/hour are making the national average. Again, you have no idea what poverty really is.”
Let’s carry this out a bit further DDC. Let’s say they have two kids who require daytime supervision while both parents are out earning $10.62 an hour. Not an uncommon salary here since 33,777 jobs in SF pay LESS than this amount. I may be wrong, but that comes out to around $2800 in disposable income. SF has about 70 square miles within it’s city limits. As a lifelong resident who keeps up with it’s issues, I can safely say 90% of it’s crime, at least blue collar crime, is committed in pockets of SF that cover maybe 10 square miles. Those 10 square miles would prolly qualify for what you describe as cesspools of criminal activety. I bring this up because that 10 square miles is prolly the only location in town where you can find housing for under a grand a month. So let’s subtract a $1000 from our $2800 since low crime appears to be your prime motivator for settling here. Utilities? Prolly somewhere in the $500 a month area. Food and Sundries for a family of four? Prolly around $600. Daycare for two, five days a week from a QUALIFIED center? Prolly around $800. Transportation? Depends. Car payment or a moneypit with over 100,000 miles on it? Times two since they have two different jobs, one at a cubicle at First Premier, the other a cubicle at WELLS FARGO. I’ll just take a stab at $300 a month. Make your own venture into clothing, health care deductables, co-pays…etc.etc.etc.
How much discretionary spending does that leave you?
To me, having little or no discretionary spending after basic neccesities are subtracted from disposable income constitutes poverty. In SF, there is plenty of it.
I will again say that you have no idea what poverty is. It sure as heck isn’t having a $1000/month apartment with $500 in utilities ($500/month in basic utilities? Are we running the A/C and heat at the same time and leaving all of our faucets running?).
Spending everything that you make doesn’t mean that you’re living in poverty.
There is not single area of Sioux Falls that would qualify as a cesspool of crime. I would live anywhere in Sioux Falls and not fear for the safety of my wife and our daughter. You might be afraid of living in some areas, but I can assure you that I wouldn’t be. You can find housing in Sioux Falls for less than $1000/month that is in a very safe area.
I’ll also point out that many of those 33,777 jobs that pay less than $10.67 are high school kids, college students and and retirees that aren’t relying on that income for their livelihood.
“I’ll also point out that many of those 33,777 jobs that pay less than $10.67 are high school kids, college students and and retirees that aren’t relying on that income for their livelihood.”
How many? What percentage? I would love to see those stats.
There are 6,620 office and administrative support jobs in SF that pay LESS than $10.78 an hour. How much less? Entry level for this occupational group is right at $9.00 an hour. Of course, we all know this occupational group is filled by highschool kids, or so says the Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce and DDC would like us to believe. There are 10,320 transportation and material handling jobs in SF. Entry level average pay is $8.23 an hour. IF your back can keep up with the pace, after a couple of years you can get all the way up to $12.00 an hour. Or how about the 9,110 production line jobs in SF? Places like the cabinet shops, Ravens, etc. Entry level? $10.00 an hour. And again, after a few years of working nights and weekends, you MIGHT, if you kiss enough ass and can move as fast as the production lines ever increasing speeds, graduate to daytime hours and the coveted $12.00 an hour. Or how about the 5,240 customer service reps? You know, the people at credit card companies who go down a flowchart and tell you why your interest rate just jumped from 9% to 30%. Or the customer service rep who tells you why your health insurance claim was rejected. I’m sure most of them are retiree’s and highschool kids. They start at $9.24 an hour average. There are many other occupational groups in SF that fall under the guidelines I have just described.
And l3wis. Do salespersons in your line of work now actually pay for a position?
Lewis:
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 6,175 people over the age of 65 working in Sioux Falls in June of 2010. There were 16,984 people between the ages of 16-24 working. I’ll let you guess how many of those 23,159 people make up the 33,777 that are working for less than $10.67/hour.
The 16-24 numbers are actually down by about 3,000 in the last couple of years, partly due to the economy and partly due to SD’s increase in minimum wage last year.
Poly43:
I noticed that you conveniently left out the average wages for those sectors.
The average customer service rep in Sioux Falls makes $12.62.
The average office and administrative support job pays $13.47 (this sector includes the above mentioned customer service rep). 75% of those jobs pay more than $10.67
The average production line job in Sioux Falls? $14.20.
The average transportation and material handling job in Sioux Falls? $13.95.
Yes, starting wages are going to be low for entry-level positions. That’s the way life goes when you have no experience or skills that pertain to the job that you are applying for. I make about double what I did 7 years ago, when I started my current job, doing the exact same thing. The only difference is that I’m better at it now and much more efficient.
What would your solution be to get more high paying jobs in Sioux Falls? Raise minimum wage to $25/hour? Not allow people to move into Sioux Falls unless they have a bachelor’s degree? Round up everyone making less than $10.67/hour and ship them down to Sioux City?
The fact is that you’re always going to have people that don’t make a lot of money. Not everyone is going to make $75K+/year. That doesn’t mean that they’re living in poverty.
The average customer service rep in Sioux Falls makes $12.62.
The average office and administrative support job pays $13.47.
The average production line job in Sioux Falls? $14.20.
The average transportation and material handling job in Sioux Falls? $13.95.
Are you proufd of those numbers ddc? I for one do not find any of those wages sustainable in this day and age. No wonder our kids are gettin the hell out of dodge. The net out of those wages for an hour can’t even buy 4 gallons of gas. The net out of these wages for an entire day can’t even get you into an “event”. Tell me Sy, would you pay your entire days net pay to go to a Sioux Falls “Event”?
You may not find those wages sustainable, but tens of thousands of people in Sioux Falls seem to make it work. Just because you couldn’t support your lifestyle with those wages doesn’t mean that no one else can. Most people consider $50,000+ a year household income pretty good, especially in Sioux Falls.
But again, what’s your solution to combat these “poverty” level unsustainable wages that so many people seem to be happy enough with to move to Sioux Falls to get paid? I’d love to hear them.
DDC- So is that your definition of life in Sioux Falls? Work to sustain yourself? Sounds kinda Communist Russia to me.
Should we supplement people’s ignorance or laziness? Hell NO! But sometimes people are going to get so far in life, that is a given. My grandparents (my mother’s parents) were the most brilliant, humorous people I have ever known, but they didn’t have an education, to today’s standards, but they worked hard and reaped the rewards, you can’t do that nowadays because of greedy businessmen.
Lewis-
That might be one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard. It even beats Poly’s assertion that a couple making $43,000 with two kids that lives in a $1,000 month apartment is living in poverty.
Spend a few hours talking with someone that escaped the USSR and you’ll see how ridiculous it is to compare it to life in Sioux Falls.
Notice I said “escaped”. You couldn’t leave Communist Russia without permission. They only allowed 4,000 people to leave in the 60’s. They did bump that up to about 250,000 people in the 70’s, but about 165,000 of those were Jews that they got tired of discriminating against.
You couldn’t even move to the next town without permission. Tired of waiting in line for 5 hours for a roll of toilet paper? Tough, use your hands and hope you’ve got running water and a sliver of soap left to wash them when you’re done.
Yeah, $40-50K/year in Sioux Falls sounds kinda like that, eh?