In March of 2020, the US government initiated an interest-free payment pause on student loans under the Trump Administration. This sweeping policy action affected over 40 million borrowers who were no longer required to pay…
South Dakota’s personal income growth was strong in the first quarter of 2023, with its 5.1% inflation-adjusted annualized growth rate more than four times the national growth rate. Part of the rapid growth reflected a…
Sometimes I like to think of the macroeconomy as an oceangoing container ship. There’s a lot of mass in those ships, a lot of momentum. The largest of these ships are nearly 450 yards long…
Mortgage rates, the ever-powerful forces shaping the dynamics of the US housing market, remain at the forefront of activity as we push into the latter half of 2023. The first half of the year has…
The labor market outlook continues to defy gravity. In our last issue, we shared how national and state labor markets generally outperformed expectations. We also discussed historic data revisions that indicated labor markets were healthier…
Affordable housing has emerged as a critical issue impacting individuals, families, and communities in South Dakota and across the United States. While the overall US housing market has experienced a noticeable slowdown in recent months,…
The South Dakota Ethanol Producers Association worked with the Dakota Institute to analyze the potential economic impacts of two large CO2 pipeline projects. The pipelines would collect CO2 byproducts of corn-based ethanol production and transport…
After a long climb to finally recover to its 1930 population in 1990, South Dakota’s population has risen significantly to just over 900,000 in 2022. Most recently, between July 2021 and July 2022, South Dakota…
While the housing market of 2022 will be remembered for its dramatic highs and lows on a national scale, these historic swings were amplified more so in distinct regional and local markets. The South Dakota…
Workers in the private sector saw their average hourly earnings fall by $0.75 from December 2021 to December 2022 when controlling for inflation, according to recently released data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (Current…
