7,916 South Dakotans filed for unemployment last week. That’s up from the somewhat normal level of 190 the week ending March 14, 1,761 the week ending March 21, and 6,645 the week ending March 28. In three weeks of hard pandemic precaution, 16,322 South Dakotans have lost jobs.
In February, total unemployment in South Dakota was 16,724. Usually, employment starts surging back from winter doldrums in March. This year, the March unemployment rate could double from February.
But those 16K jobs down are gross loss, not net. Some outfits are hiring. My morning paper tells me Demkota Ranch Beef has about 60 openings—you can make $15 to $22.50 cleavering cattle… and given that Brown County as of Thursday had a coronavirus incidence rate of 0.25 cases per thousand population compared to Minnehaha’s rate of 1.42 per thousand, Demkota is apparently doing a better job of protecting its workers, their families, and the community from coronavirus than Smithfield Foods in Sioux Falls.
Nationally, 6.6 million more Americans filed for unemployment last week, bringing the coronavirus labor collapse to 16.8 million. The number of unemployed Americans in February was 5.8 million. Get ready to see the y-axis on economic graphs thrown all out of scale for years to come.
In Pennington the rate per thousand must be super-tiny, but not because we have a lot of hand washers. The cause must be something else.
Demkota Beef. I like that name.
Because cattle are bigger than pigs or chickens there would be more space between workers anyway. Maybe they expanded that by another few feet.