I didn’t find this story surprising, but just a reminder that there are not a lot of ‘professional management’ jobs in Sioux Falls (this person actually had to go to a corn field in Iowa to get that kind of job). I hear it a lot from friends with college degrees, people are not hiring professionals, and if they are, the wages are not there or the hours don’t match the salary.
She freshened up her resume, sent out numerous cover letters to countless companies and left no website unturned. She was expecting a relatively low-maintenance process, given the Sioux Falls job market continues to thrive and outshine many similarly-sized cities across the nation. According to the South Dakota Department of Labor, Sioux Falls’ unemployment rate currently sits at 3.1 percent. Despite the low number, Orsack quickly learned not everyone finds the job they are looking for.
“I just came to learn it was very difficult to get anyone’s attention and to get a call back, to get an interview,” Orsack said. “It felt like when they saw Las Vegas as my home address, they didn’t want to try because I wasn’t technically in Sioux Falls yet.”
The companies that did get back to her would not fly her in for an interview unless she footed the bill. Faced with few job prospects, and positions that would bring severe pay cuts, Orsack felt exhausted and unwanted.
“I wanted to get home, and when you sit and you wait for months on months to figure out if you’re even going to get an interview for a job, it feels like you don’t have it,” Orsack said.
What I often see is that local companies try to get by with hiring fewer professionals (to save wages) and stretch the resources of their lower paid and qualified employees to the max.
Companies in Sioux Falls are not here, or didn’t come here to pay ‘high wages’ and to ‘hire’ multitudes of professionals. That is not how SD or SF recruits companies. CHEAP LABOR!
Doesn’t surprise me the runaround this person got. Had a friend looking to move back to Sioux Falls after going to college in Texas. She had trouble getting interviews because #1. She had an Austin, Texas address and #2. Though she grew up in Sioux Falls, and is very much white, she has an African American name (First and Last) and she didn’t start getting interviews and callbacks until she started putting her photo on her resumes, she joked, “Almost instantly.” And it’s not like she was a schlump, she was on her college’s honor roll in her field of study. She eventually got a decent job at an international  agri-business company, the pay and bonuses were good, but they also expected her to work 50-60 hours a week on a 40 hour a week salary.
She moved back to Texas. The only positive experience she had while living in Sioux Falls was buying a house here on foreclosure, fixing it up and using it as a rental for extra revenue.
Sioux Falls needs to make a decision. Do we want to continue to be the wasteland of call centers and low-paying professional jobs, or do we want to start sharing the wealth with the hardworking South Dakotans? The mayor can continue to talk about the low unemployment and high building permit numbers all he wants, but I wouldn’t consider these ‘Big Wins’ or ‘Successes’ until about 99% of the workforce in this community are benefitting, otherwise, it is just more smoke and mirrors from the administration.
I work for the big “C” here in Sioux Falls. I cry every time I look at the salary ranges for other parts of the country for the exact same job I am doing. We are paid much less, yet we produce most of the results and perform more, better quality work than anywhere else in the country.
Yep – moved back here to be closer to family – and because I’d been subscribing to SD papers and watching the employment ads-there APPEARED to be a good market for my skills and experience. Now I’m stuck. Can’t afford to leave and have that “gap” in my professional career – the whole time I’ve been in SD. It’s a death trap. Good thing I’m close enough to retirement now I don’t really give a crap any more. If I were a little younger (like you DL) I could easily hate this state.
Shut up and mix me another drink.
I agree with all of you our motto in this state is (we came to die not to buy)
rufxsx: I could retire, but not at full retirement age. In the last 10 years I have struggled with low paying jobs, no insurance, even though I have great skills and good work history. I have had bosses who have been down right nasty and degrading. They do not have to be nice any more or treat us like humans.
In Jan. I had my holidays and personal days cut (2nd time in 2 years) and was told they were paying me too much. All was done in an email from the owner who sat on the other side of the wall from me. (Did not care I had inc. their biz 23% last year.)
After that scathing email, I walked out. Done. For months I have looked in SF … nada. It was scary, but I had had enough and was constantly stressed. I figured I could find something part time and get my SS if I had too.
After a few days I decided to call the competition in Canada and was hired nearly immediately. I will be able to make more money, have an allowance for insurance, holidays, same vacation and have more products to sell than in previous company. I am telecommuting. I was just lucky…well time will tell.
Once I get all of this going, I can work until I am 70 if I want. At some point I will move the heck out of here.
I wish you luck. I understand the stuck feeling.
I always laugh when I hear the mayor talk about “quality of life” improvements in Sioux Falls. It’s all quality of life for the young, fairly well to do. To heck with the low income, seniors, and disabled people. His only concerns when it comes to quality of life improvements is recreation, never any good paying jobs, no transportation, etc.
A local pizza place right now here in this town has on its blinking marquee the following…. “Now Hiring…. $ 8.00” Wow! 75 cents over the minimum, yet over $ 5.00 less than what is needed to make it here in this town on your own according to a recent study.
I know it is just a pizza place some what dependent upon high schoolers as employees, but how can any employer brag about $ 8.00 a hour, and many employers do not pay much more. I can just hear it now, “Have you heard?… Whatyamacallit is paying $ 8.00 a hour…. How exciting!”
Funny thing – at my shiny new public sector gig in the Cities (where I make 70% more than the job I left behind in Sioux Falls), my co-worker (a CPA) grew up in Sioux Falls, went to USD. Said he and his wife (a fellow white collar financial industry worker) considered moving back to Sioux Falls a few years ago but couldn’t do it because the job market was just so terrible – both in terms of wage but also in terms of availability and opportunities for advancement.
Sure, the cost of living here in MSP is higher – but another 10% in expenses and a state income tax aren’t much of a deterrent if you’re making 30-50% more for comparable jobs. And then there’s that whole quality of life issue. That’s super subjective, I know, but as someone who grew up in a city of similar size to Sioux Falls, it’s hard for me to muster a compliment about Sioux Falls other than that I bet it’s a nice place to grow up. Would I have wanted to live there my whole life? No way. Not enough culture. Not enough diversity. Not enough economic opportunity.
I’ll give you credit DL – you do a good job of highlighting this issue, and it’s a HUGE issue for Sioux Falls. The city’s so-called prosperity is built on quicksand. It’s a handful of rich people who shower the city with charity, and an ever-growing class of low-skill to medium-skill jobs that are never going to provide a path to upward economic mobility because there’s this huge chasm in the Sioux Falls employment market.
The city has to find a way to build that bridge. Because eventually, they’re going to run out of kids from dying rural towns who are moving to Sioux Falls because it’s the only place they can find work.
Horn guy did you really have to tell the truth about people moving to Sioux falls, you did a great job.I wish a union employer would move to town and create about a thousand jobs over 25 an hour to start.
Interesting presentation on the future of technology tonight at Sioux Falls Tomorrow meeting from the superintendent of the Brandon Schools. He foresees a not too distant future (remember we’re talking the next ten years as a context here) where technology begins to become implanted in people – cyborg style – esp. information access technology.
Also that remote learning tech will soon enable one highly qualified expert teacher to be the actual instructor for MILLIONS of students, while what we currently think of as teachers will become site facilitators at best. Sees a diminishing need for actual school buildings as the technology will enable much more home schooling (not taught by parents).
Also that technology currently exists that can be used to gauge student proficiency at task/learning such that the precise next thing a student needs to learn for subject knowledge can be the actual next thing they are taught vs. a programmatic template or a teacher classroom evaluation.
Also talked about how automation just as it did in the manufacturing business, is beginning to replace labor in the service industries (call centers, etc.)
Kids from dying rural towns – not tech-enabled- are practically already toast. Will be lots of struggling “artists”.
First off, I rarely comment on the post’s discussion, but I will give you all credit, it has been civil. Thank You.
I had to laugh tonight when one of our TV stations did a story tonight about the demolition noise by the new elementary school, and a parent said, “I might homeschool.”
Any how, Ruf, you are artist. Are you ‘struggling’?
Compared to what?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathleen-ann/american-used-to-haves_b_4732434.html
This kind of goes with the post about Erpenbach, but also with this post. In the Public Services Meeting, Erpenbach was opposed to an individual taxi cab owner using his vehicle for multiple things (it is his private vehicle and he also teaches driver’s ed as well as taxi service). They have proposed permanent signage on the taxi’s and he proposed that he uses magnetic, so when he is Driver’s ed he displays that magnetic and when he is taxi he displays that. Erp wasn’t having it, she felt he shouldn’t be able to do multiple things with HIS vehicle. It goes back to people having multiple jobs to get by. In essence she feels the city should be able to regulate what a private cab owner does with their vehicle in the off hours. I’m not only amazed at how little Erpenbach knows (Karsky agreed with her) but how little the council as a whole understands about free enterprise and the job market/economy in this town. Some of us have to have multiple sources of income, and the city shouldn’t be able to implement some STUPID sign requirement so that this man can’t use his vehicle for other purposes. He would still be licensed and he admitted he pays different insurance rates for driver’s ed.
Congrats Hornguy,
You bounced tf out of that non-union sweatshop here like a pro. Glad to hear it, and good luck to you.
Thanks for the kind words, anominous. I enjoy your characterization of my former employer, though I’d hardly call it a sweatshop. I wasn’t paid much, but considering how little full-time players are asked to do in exchange for their wage, you really have an embarrassment of time on your hands working for that group. My lament was always that there’s not enough of a “scene” in Sioux Falls for one to truly augment that income with lessons, freelance work, etc. to ever turn it into the kind of family-supporting middle-class living that most people ultimately want. $30k a year and a handful of unemployment checks in the summer with no hope of substantive improvement isn’t really much of a future to hang a hat on. They drop about six figures in compensation on their executive director and music director but then have a string quartet working half-time for something below the poverty level. Wouldn’t be my priorities, but I don’t call the shots.
The musicians should really work on that union thing though. One of the few items left unfinished on my to-do list with that group.
I left behind a lot of great friends and miss Monks, but ultimately it was clear there was no future in Sioux Falls for someone with my talents. The music scene barely supports the handful of talented people who have nailed that work down and my public sector background is of nearly no use in a city that’s not a state capital. Leaving the people was hard. Leaving the city? Not so much.
I could’ve spent months looking for work in Sioux Falls and would’ve been lucky to snag something that paid mid-30’s. I left for the Cities and got the first job I applied for (I interview well and that Fulbright doesn’t hurt in terms of getting noticed in a stack of resumes). I get $51k and great bennies for a job that would probably pay $35k in Sioux Falls. I was an unlikely candidate to stay anyway, but the powers-that-be in South Dakota have to start figuring out that most all of their best students are leaking out-of-state because there’s just nothing here for them job-wise. It’s a lot easier to get homegrown talent to stay than attract out-of-state talent.
But for as much as I dog Sioux Falls, I stuck around as long as I did because I can see its potential. The city punches above its weight class already. At some point though, people have to get past that “we’re just lucky to have companies locate here” mentality and really demand better of their employers and their state. Governor Daugaard peddling businesses to bring their $10 an hour jobs to South Dakota to exploit a favorable tax scenario is a shitty economic development strategy.
But whether it’s Daugaard or Huether, people first have to believe that they deserve better than what they’re getting.
Sorry, I spoke rhetorically. I guess that quartet is technically at/around 130% of FPL. Might as well be accurate.
The people on the city council including the mayor have no idea how the underlings live. I got into a debate on facebook today with a woman that didn’t think minimum wage should be increased because that money would come from the government and people shouldn’t expect the government to keep giving them handouts. I had to set her straight on that. Then she went on to say if people can’t live on the current minimum wage they should either get a better job or a second job. I told her about my 22 year old grandaughter who has a two year old son and works two minimum wage jobs for 60 hours a week to get by and that doesn’t give her much quality time with her little boy. People have to get over the idea that it is just teenagers working at minimum wage.
One thing you’ve not addressed is the paternalism here. Huether’s daughter got a 6 figure job at Sanford fresh out of college. I’ve met people from California & Tenessee who relocated here. They make it look like they’ve moved down and retired. Realistically, their business is still there and expanded everywhere. There’s no personal or corporate income tax here. Tax on services is zero if all of your business is billed to out of state. I have contractors in California who were laid off. I pay them from here less but show them how to take write offs so they actually make more. They work for their old companies and their competitors such that they’re in demand because they are acclamated to current business & technology. I want to be sure the good old boys around here can’t see how we get rich. They can steal from public funds but we know how to profit legally.
Incorporating in South Dakota is $150 with annual renewals $50. You file nothing income wise with the state unless you have employees or income in this state. They don’t know you’re here. Probably the only setback is you’re subject to federal taxes. The rich take trips to the Bahamas or Caymans because there’s no US reporting. Into or out from the US is possible with $10,000 tax free. However, gold/silver/jewelry is excluded. I pay taxes but I bank out of state and I order everything I can from the Internet so I do not fund city government. If you’re not democracy, I’ll not support you.
The real rich (Ted Turner, Kevin Costner) live west river where they can support democracy & own half the state without paying taxes. The vulgar penny rich live in Sioux Falls. We know who they are. It gets harder and harder to accept their schoolyard bullying of hard working citizens.
I can only imagine what could have been if our prosperous “bank/credit card” employer had enhanced the wages for his employees that helped him make his zillions. Could it have raised wages throughout the SF employment market? Could it have infused more dollars into the local economy, having a multiplying effect? But then they would not have had the ability to “squirrel” away $’s to create the grandeur of san…d, for the san…ds of time.
I totally agree with many of the comments that there is a terrific barrier to move into a stream of good paying middle class life-style paying jobs.
I have another success story of a friend that got away (I am very proud of her) When I graduated from TECH school I befriended her, she was going to Augustana for her first four years of college, we worked at the Olive Garden together. She came from a farm family in Freeman and basically borrowed all of her money to go to college (she had to go 8 years for her medical degree) She wasn’t that great of a student either, I think something like 3.0, so she was worried about getting into graduate school for her specialized field. She got accepted in Florida, and after over $250K in student loans she ended up in Atlanta. She just happened to be working for a guy who contracted with a large retailer in the Atlanta area for their services and one day he said to her, “Do you want some of my contracts?” She asked how much, “He said, there yours.” She has actually expanded her contracts and does very, very, very, well. her and her husband actually moved outside of Atlanta and live on a lake home. And the State of SD wonders why young people leave for better opportunities. She could have never had this much success in SD. Never.