South Dakota just posted the biggest net migration gain of any state in the country, adding nearly 11,000 more residents than it lost to relocation, a 9.5% jump that put it ahead of every other state in the union, according to a report from self-storage data company Stora covered by Fox News. For a state that spent decades better known for its population loss than its population boom, that’s a genuine reversal of fortune.
The pitch is straightforward. Stora’s analysis, which drew on U.S. Census Bureau migration data over a two-year window along with Zillow pricing and federal housing figures, put South Dakota’s average home price at $310,014, well below the national median. Add in a state constitution that bars income, estate, and inheritance taxes entirely, and the math starts to explain why more than 115,000 house buyers moved through the state’s housing market during the period Stora tracked.
Not retirees chasing a slower pace, workers chasing a paycheck
The easy assumption about a rural state gaining population is that it’s retirees cashing out of expensive coastal homes and settling somewhere quiet. South Dakota’s numbers tell a different story. Reporting from SD News Watch found that working-age adults between 18 and 64 have consistently made up the largest share of people moving into the state, dwarfing the number of retirees arriving in the same years. Augustana University economics professor David Sorenson pushed back directly on the retiree narrative in his conversations with SD News Watch, arguing that the idea of elderly residents driving the state’s migration numbers doesn’t hold up against the data.
The scale of that working-age influx has shifted over time. SD News Watch’s review of Census figures found the state averaged roughly 21,000 working-age arrivals a year against around 2,000 retirees during the early part of the decade, with a 2022 peak of more than 22,500 working-age movers compared to fewer than 2,000 retirees. More recently, net migration gains cooled from a high above 8,100 in 2021 and 2022 down to closer to 2,000 a year by 2023 through 2025, even as the state kept its position near the top of national rankings.
Dakota Institute CEO Jared McEntaffer told SD News Watch that the more useful way to read the numbers is to focus on net migration rather than gross totals, and to treat any single year’s figures cautiously alongside other data sources rather than as a standalone verdict on the state’s trajectory. That’s a fair caution for a trend that has genuine momentum behind it, even if the pace of gains has varied year to year.
What’s actually pulling people in
Some of that movement has a personal shape to it. Danielle Schulz, who lives in White, South Dakota, moved back to the state after four decades in California, prompted in part by her father’s death and a pull toward family and a different pace of life, according to her account to SD News Watch. She described taking a significant pay cut to make the move, a tradeoff that lines up with what a lot of relocating households are weighing these days: lower income against a dramatically lower cost of living, particularly on housing.
State government has leaned into that pitch on purpose. Former Governor Kristi Noem’s “Freedom Works Here” campaign put $6.5 million behind marketing the state to working-age adults specifically, though pinning exact numbers of new residents to that campaign versus organic economic trends is difficult, per SD News Watch’s reporting. What’s clearer is the demand side of the equation: Stora’s data shows Black Hills-area homes running as high as $616,116 on average, well above the statewide figure, evidence that even South Dakota’s priciest corners still undercut what buyers are fleeing in places like California.
None of this means South Dakota’s growth is guaranteed to keep accelerating. The cooling net migration numbers in the most recent years suggest the initial surge may be leveling off, and rural states have a long history of population trends reversing once housing costs catch up to demand. For now, though, the combination of no state income tax, home prices roughly $310,000 below the coastal markets people are leaving, and a growth pattern that skews toward people still building careers rather than winding them down has turned a state once overlooked on relocation lists into the one everyone else is trying to catch.
Leave a Reply