South Dakota’s population is up by 8.9%, according to new numbers from the 2020 Census. The state is also more racially diverse and urban.
Half of South Dakota’s counties lost population in the past 10 years, and half grew.
Jerauld County, in a rural eastern part of the state, saw the greatest decline. Lincoln County, which includes part of Sioux Falls, grew the most.
But the urban areas are growing more than the rural counties are shrinking.
“The counties that already are adjacent to Sioux Falls, Rapid or the urban centers in our state, they are gaining population. And it’s the counties that already had a smaller population and they’re still losing population,” said Weiwei Zhang, state demographer and a sociology professor at South Dakota State University.
For example, Jerauld County, which has Wessington Springs as its county seat, lost about 400 residents, a nearly 20% change. But Lincoln gained more than 20,000 residents, a 45% change.
The state is becoming more diverse, Zhang said.
“We are also seeing more of the Hispanic and also a slight increase in the Black as well as the Asian population even though the changes in this trend is lower than the national,” she said.
62 percent of the country is white. In South Dakota, it’s 81 percent.
South Dakota has the nation’s second-fastest-growing Hispanic population. The Hispanic population increased from 2.7% in 2010 to 4.4% in 2020.
Meanwhile, the percentages of South Dakotans identifying as mixed-race or something other than white increased:
- The Black population in South Dakota increased from 1.8% in 2010 to 3% in 2020;
- The Native American population increased from 10.1% to 11.1%;
- The Asian population increased from 1.3% to 2.1%.
Beadle County, which includes the city of Huron, has South Dakota’s highest percentage of Hispanic and Asian residents; Minnehaha County, home to Sioux Falls, has the highest percentage of Black residents; and Oglala Lakota County, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, has the highest percentage of Native American residents.
The growth in diversity is due to immigration, multiracial relationships and fertility rates, Zhang said.
She said privacy steps have impacted the accuracy of census data in less-populated areas so people should be cautious when looking at statistics from rural South Dakota.