Latest report shows housing, child care remain issues for Mitchell area economic health
The report, a joint effort between Dakota Wesleyan University, the Mitchell Area Development Corporation and the South Dakota Secretary of State's Office, was revealed to the public at a press conference Tuesday, May 13 on the DWU campus.
Takeaways from the report, the data for which was gathered and parsed by 18 students in Tracy Dice's principles of macroeconomics class, include both positives and negatives on various factors that play into community economic health.
Among those points singled out for attention at the Tuesday presentation was the ongoing need for housing in Mitchell. According to the report, housing prices have risen significantly, with the average home price reaching $431,000. Combined with stagnant local incomes and rising mortgage rates, affordability remains a key issue.
Mike Lauritsen, CEO of the Mitchell Area Development Corporation and Chamber of Commerce, said feedback confirms what the local leaders are already well aware of — to grow business, one needs to grow the workforce. That is done by making sure there is plenty of housing for those workers.
"This is not unique to Mitchell. We know there is a housing shortage across South Dakota," Lauritsen said. "As we add supply, we hope that housing prices will go down. That's our goal."
He noted homes are in the process of being erected or brought to housing developments in the community, and more are planned to help ease the housing crunch.
The housing shortage is exacerbated by the fact that small businesses dominate the regional economy, but workforce shortages and lack of affordable childcare limit their growth.
"One student looked into a report that listed all of the daycares in Mitchell and she split Mitchell up into four quadrants based on populations, and you can see at in-home daycares, 92% are in the north half of Mitchell. When you add (all daycares) together, they have a capacity of 576," Dice told the audience. "In a 20-mile radius of the Mitchell area, there are 3,026 kids who would be of daycare age, which greatly exceeds the 576. We can look at our population and see that we do not have enough daycares in our city to meet demand."
Mitchell-area demographics were also highlighted during the presentation.
Rising healthcare costs, a shortage of healthcare professionals and an aging population strain regional resources. Because of that, telehealth and mobile healthcare units have started to address rural access issues, but the state faces ongoing challenges in recruiting and retaining healthcare workers.
Gender wage gaps also persist in the healthcare field, with men earning an average of 15% more than women across Mitchell, Huron and Yankton, the data showed.
In a surprise under the public transportation section of the report, Lauritsen said numbers appear to indicate that Mitchell provides more rides through public transport than its neighbor Huron, but does so at a lesser cost. Finding out exactly why that is could lead to answers for cost-saving measures in other sectors.
"This is some of the information that comes out of this report where you say, 'Oh, this is interesting.' And then you start to dig in to figure out why. We don't know the answer to that, but this is something we thought was very interesting that the students found," Lauritsen said.
Other highlights included a notation that 70% of Mitchell's city revenue comes from sales tax, with half of consumer spending driven by visitors outside the city. That data reveals Mitchell's role as a regional hub, but it also underscores the need to continuously invest in community amenities, housing, and economic diversification to remain competitive and sustain growth.
The report also suggested that despite global economic challenges, including trade tensions and inflation, South Dakota continues to show resilience through strong agricultural output and favorable business environment.
Lauritsen said the report is useful both for what it shows Mitchell doing well and what it shows Mitchell not doing well. The positive aspects of the report are encouraging, but it is difficult to correct problems when one doesn't know what those problems are. The report, broken down into easy-to-read graphs and charts, puts hard numbers into language understandable to the layman.
He was grateful for the focus and expertise of both Dice and her students in bringing the report to life in a way that everyone can understand. Having assembled some of the economic reports in the mid-2010s himself, he is aware of how complex data interpretation can be.
"I did the meat of the work on those early reports and they are rough, because I am no economist, and it's a lot of data to go through," Lauritsen said. "But we knew what we wanted to see in the future, and as you look at the reports produced, you can see the progress through the years. They get better, and better and better."
Barrett Nielsen, a DWU senior who graduated Sunday, was one of the students who broke down data that was used in the report. The math major is looking to land his first job out of college, hopefully at a local financial institution, but for a portion of his senior year he was poring over numbers for the economic report.
It's a lot of work, and categorizing the data and interpreting it requires focus, Nielsen said. There is little indication where the data will lead, and sometimes it reflects positive development while other times it reflects the negative. Other times, the data doesn't seem to say anything at all. That's all part of interpreting the data, he said.
"The biggest thing that I learned as a math major is that data is very, very messy. Sometimes we don't even get results in general, and sometimes it's not the results we want," Nielsen said. "So it's just taking what we have and what we get and then making sure that we come to a reasonable outcome from that sort of processing."
The report utilizes business data on file with the state Secretary of State office and other public sources and translates hard numbers into easy-to-understand graphics and tables. Formerly produced through Northern State University, the report later became an ongoing quarterly project spearheaded by students at Dakota Wesleyan and Dice, associate professor of business and economics at the school.
The report is intended to help economic development and community leaders across the state interpret the data into useful information that they can apply to help boost both their local and statewide economy.
Johnson said South Dakota and the country itself are facing uncertain times. From farm families to small businesses owners, concerns about tariffs and trade gaps abound, but so does hope. That optimism has fueled generations of South Dakotans in the past, but fair trade deals and fruitful negotiations factor heavily into that, so many of those families and owners are taking a wait-and-see approach.
But Johnson said the data put together by the Dakota Wesleyan students will be a benefit for economic development leaders around the state. With solid data in hand, state leaders have a fighting chance to find a way to maximize growth and development.
"This economic report, produced through a unique partnership between the South Dakota Secretary of State's Office, Dakota Wesleyan University and the Mitchell Area Development Corporation, offers valuable insights into the trends shaping our state's economy," Johnson said. "I commend the students, educators and community leaders who have contributed to this effort. Your work provides a vital lens through which we can better understand and support South Dakota's economic health and prosperity."
The latest economic report assembled by Dakota Wesleyan is expected to be on the South Dakota Secretary of State's website in the near future. That page, where past economic reports can also be found, is located at
sdsos.gov/general-information/publications/default.aspx.
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