Continuing Claims For Unemployment At 45-Year Low -- October 4,2 018

The headline you will only see here: with regard to jobless claims, the 4-week moving average is at a 45-year low. Forty-five years ago was 1973. 

• folks working are not drawing (or drawing less) government benerits
• folks working are paying into social security
• many folks working are paying federal income tax
• some folks working are paying state income tax
• some folks working are buying Apple Watches
• almost all folks take some type of motorized transportation to work
• almost all motorized transportation uses crude oil derivatives
• what's not to like
• a lot of working people won't find time to get away from their jobs to vote

Jobs: wow, low numbers.

• forecast: 213K
• actual: 207K -- wow
• the 4-week average for continuing claims fell 13,000 in lagging data for the September 22 week to 1.665 million which is a 45-year low

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Sioux Falls

Bloomberg got the headline wrong, but the story is great, nonetheless. The headline:

Why Sioux Falls Is Booming South Dakota’s biggest city isn’t a college town or a state capital or in the Sun Belt. So how does it keep growing and growing?

In fact, Sioux Falls is a college town: it has a university and a college, I believe.

There are 63 metropolitan areas in the U.S. (out of 382 total) that saw their populations grow by 10 percent or more from 2010 through mid-2017, according to estimates compiled by the Census Bureau. That compares with an increase of 5.5 percent for the nation as a whole, and 6.5 percent for its metropolitan areas — which, just to be clear on what we’re talking about, are defined as “one or more counties that contain a city of 50,000 or more inhabitants, or contain a Census Bureau-defined urbanized area and have a total population of at least 100,000 (75,000 in New England).”

Thirty-nine of these fast-growing metros are in the South and 19 in the West. This should come as no big surprise, given that these two regions are estimated to have accounted for 86 percent of the country’s almost-17-million-person increase in population since 2010. None of the fast-growth areas is in the Northeast, but there are five in the slowest-growing of the four regions delineated by the Census Bureau: the Midwest.

One of these Midwestern standouts, Iowa City, Iowa, is home to a large research university, a frequent catalyst for local economic success. Another, Des Moines, Iowa, is a state capital with a metro-area population of 645,911, which is in keeping with urbanist Aaron Renn’s dictum that “If you want to be a successful Midwestern city, it helps to be a state capital with a metro area population of over 500,000.”

Two, Bismarck and Fargo, North Dakota, have been beneficiaries of a big shale-oil boom in their state.

That leaves Sioux Falls, South Dakota, which has seen its metro-area population rise 13.5 percent since 2010 (and 68.8 percent since 1990), to 259,094.

There’s no major university in town; local legend has it that city fathers were given the choice 150-plus years ago between the University of South Dakota and the South Dakota State Penitentiary, and they opted for the latter because they figured it would bring more jobs. 1 The state capital, Pierre, is more than a three hours’ drive away. The signature local industry used to be meatpacking — and there’s still a big, exceptionally fragrant Smithfield Foods Inc. pork-processing plant along the Big Sioux River about a mile north of downtown.

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MDU Acquires Sioux Falls Construction Company

From press release:: Sweetman Construction Company of Sioux Falls, SD; will become part of Knife River Corporation.

Pales in comparison to what Oasis has become. Just saying.