South Dakota: Quietly booming




GOOD EARTH, a state park in South Dakota, is one of the oldest inhabited sites in the United States. It was an important gathering place and trading centre for the Oneota tribes from 1500 to 1700, and then for French settlers. It lies just south-east of Sioux Falls, which has become a big trading centre in its own right.Quiet success might be South Dakota’s motto. It has no oil industry; its neighbour North Dakota, with its shale-oil boom, gets all the notice. It has no large military base. There is not even an influential university. Yet South Dakota’s 3.7% jobless rate is the third-lowest in America. The rate is even lower in Sioux Falls, which has the fourth-fastest-growing economy in the country.The state economy used to rest on farming, but today hospitals and financial companies are among the chief employers. The change began in 1980 when the state enacted financial reforms, prompting Citibank to move its credit-card business there. So many banks followed that the state now has more bank assets, $2.76 trillion, than any other, including New York.Manufacturing and biotech are thriving, too. Last year Marmen, a French-Canadian wind-turbine manufacturer, opened its first American plant not far from Sioux Falls. Bel Brands, the American arm of a French dairy company, has also invested in the state. South Dakota sits usefully in a nexus of north-south and east-west...

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