The Minneapolis Fed notes that tourism, along with relocating retirees, health care, and Ellsworth Air Force Base have boosted Rapid City’s economy:
It’s not an exaggeration to call tourism the economic lifeblood of the three-county Rapid City metropolitan area, which boasts four National Park Service sites and South Dakota’s most popular state park. The area also attracts a significant number of new residents, Air Force personnel, and those seeking health care.
As a result, business sectors that benefit from the movement of people to Rapid City have an outsized effect on the area economy when compared with other communities in the Great Plains and the adjoining Intermountain West region.
In recent years, these sectors have helped propel the area’s economic expansion, with gross domestic product (GDP) growing by 3 percent a year between 2019 and 2023. In the preceding five years, GDP grew at half that rate [Tu-Uyen Tran, “Rapid City: A Magent for Tourists, Bomber Crews, and Retirees,” Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, 2025.12.18].
But banking on tourism means lower wages:
A significant number of workers, particularly in tourism-affiliated sectors, earn lower-than-average wages. For example, in 2023, employment in accommodation and food services and retail represented 33 percent of total employment but only 16 percent of total personal earnings, according to government statistics [Tran, 2025.12.18].
And those relocating retirees are scooping up houses but not adding to the workforce:
Demand for housing, driven by new residents, has outpaced supply, driving up costs. During the pandemic, rent grew by as much as 7 percent year over year and home prices by as much as 56 percent (per square foot), according to data compiled by Elevate Rapid City and Realtor.com, respectively.
The supply of workers has not kept pace either. The unemployment rate in the Rapid City area has long been low compared with most of the region, but it’s been exceptionally low since 2022, averaging 2 percent or less. Employers have struggled to find enough workers [Tran, 2025.12.18].
Funny how the market doesn’t solve this problem by offering higher wages to get more people to move to the Hills and work in the tourism industry that is so crucial to Rapid City’s economy.
Downed power lines, unrepentant utilities, uprooted trees, wildfires, school closures, collapsed buildings, the gnashing of teeth and red state failure all fall at the feet of South Dakota Republicans. And speaking of poisoning your own water supplies then begging for more federal money for a Missouri River pipeline that would lift water nearly two thousand feet in elevation then pump it a hundred and fifty miles for lawns, Rally campgrounds and Ellsworth with tax dollars spent on carving through Native America for white privilege instead of empowering communities to harvest snowmelt and rainwater rural communities are still dependent on politicians who exploit need.