Top Ten South Dakota Employers: Avera Beats Sanford, Government Beats All Other Sectors

Last updated on 2016-03-22

Sanford Health exerts a lot of political pull in South Dakota (pull which will be tested by its current effort to undo the will of the voters by rolling back Initiated Measure 17, our Any Willing Provider health insurance law, with House Bill 1067).

But Sanford is not the biggest employer, or even the biggest health care employer, in South Dakota. The outfit writing the most paychecks in our fair state is Avera. Check out the top ten South Dakota employers listed in the brand-spankin’-new South Dakota Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for FY 2015, released yesterday by our Bureau of Finance and Management:

Avera employs 1 out of 25 South Dakota workers, 61% more than Sanford. Add Rapid City Regional Hospital, and our three biggest health care providers provide 7.7% of South Dakota’s jobs, meaning if no one got sick, our economy would be in deep trouble.

Walmart and Hy-Vee are duking it out for top retail employer in the state, each employing over 5,000 South Dakotans (Hy-Vee! You could top Walmart by bringing a store to Aberdeen!). Wells Fargo sneaks into the tenth spot with 3,520 employees, just under 1% of our workforce required by corporate protocol to shout “Welcome to Wells Fargo!” across the lobby and engage in small talk when they should be attentively counting my deposits.

The remaining four top employers are all government: state, federal, Sioux Falls, and Rapid City. Over 41,000 people, one out of ten South Dakota workers, punch the clock for those top four public employers; according to U.S. Census data from 2014, another 12,000 or so shovel snow, chase bad guys, and otherwise serve the public for other local governments.

The workforce of these top ten employers comprises 20.9% of South Dakota’s workers.

Scroll down a snudge and compare the top employers from 2006:

The top four public employers topped the list in 2006 and employed nearly the same share of working South Dakotans, 10.1%. The feds actually employ fewer South Dakotans now under president Barack Obama than they did under President George W. Bush (Kristi, what’s that you keep saying about protecting businesses from a growing government?).

Citibank has yielded to Wells Fargo, and John Morrell gave up its spot to Hy-Vee (hmm… a shift from production to consumption?). Sanford topped Avera in 2006 by 56%, but over the last decade, Sanford’s workforce has nearly doubled while Avera’s nearly quadrupled. Speaking of market concentration, the top ten employers in 2006 only captured 15.9% of South Dakota’s workforce, compared to 20.9% now. More South Dakotans are now beholden to fewer employers, which deep down in our social fabric means a concentration of money and power in fewer hands. This blog will watch for the 2025 CAFR to see if that trend continues! (Pssst! Dennis! We could check that trend if the state promoted more small organic dairies instead of giant CAFOs!)