Skilled Trades Compensation: South Dakota

Overview

This profile reports what six core skilled trades — electricians, plumbers and pipefitters, equipment operators, carpenters, HVAC technicians, and line workers — are paid across South Dakota, using the most recent federal occupational wage statistics. All figures are statewide annual wages in US dollars from the OEWS May 2025 reference period; BLS publishes these as statewide estimates that average across a state's metropolitan and non-metropolitan labor markets alike. The profile is produced under the Lab's public-source compensation benchmarking method (WIL-CBM-1.0): it is a public-data profile, not a peer survey, and it describes pay positioning only — it makes no claim about labor availability or hiring conditions.

Annual wages, US dollars. Employment is OEWS-estimated statewide occupational employment. — Sources: BLS

Percentages computed from OEWS medians as shown; positive = state median above the national benchmark. — Sources: BLS

What the figures show

Only two of South Dakota's six trades clear the national median. Carpenters show the widest gap to the national median, −20.5% ($48,140 vs. $60,580 nationally), while equipment operators come closest to parity at −0.6%. Line workers remain South Dakota's best-paid trade in dollar terms at $97,310, 2.1% above the national line-worker median. These are observed wage comparisons only; nothing here measures how hard these trades are to hire.

Method and limitations

Prepared under WIL-CBM-1.0 (Public-Source Compensation Benchmarking: A Method Note, WIL-RB-2026.3-COMP-METHOD). Wage figures are BLS OEWS May 2025 estimates for South Dakota and the United States, read from the Lab's governed warehouse (BLS_OEWS ingest, September 2026). Statewide estimates average across the state's metro and non-metro labor markets; OEWS wages are modeled estimates with published relative standard errors, wider in the smallest-employment cells. In three of the six trades the statewide median sits above the mean — a distribution shape consistent with wages concentrated at collectively bargained journeyman scale with an apprentice lower tail; OEWS does not identify bargaining status, so this is offered as context, not a finding. Union density and prevailing-wage coverage vary across South Dakota's labor markets and may contribute to the gaps shown here, but OEWS does not identify bargaining status, so that attribution is left as context, not a finding. No suppressed cell is printed as a value; any suppressed or missing cell is shown as missing, never zero. This profile asserts pay positioning only — not workforce availability, not hiring conditions.

@techreport{WILRB20263COMPTRADESSTSD,
  title       = {Skilled Trades Compensation: South Dakota: Six construction trades in South Dakota, May 2025},
  author      = {Workforce Intelligence Lab},
  institution = {Workforce Intelligence Lab},
  type        = {WIL Compensation Profiles},
  number      = {WIL-RB-2026.3-COMP-TRADES-ST-SD},
  year        = {2026},
  note        = {Version 1.0; methodology WIL-CBM-1.0},
  url         = {https://wilinstitute.org/library/p/skilled-trades-compensation-south-dakota},
}

TY  - RPRT
AU  - Workforce Intelligence Lab
TI  - Skilled Trades Compensation: South Dakota: Six construction trades in South Dakota, May 2025
PY  - 2026
PB  - Workforce Intelligence Lab
M1  - WIL-RB-2026.3-COMP-TRADES-ST-SD
ET  - Version 1.0
UR  - https://wilinstitute.org/library/p/skilled-trades-compensation-south-dakota
AB  - A public-source compensation profile of six skilled construction trades in South Dakota, using BLS OEWS May 2025 wage percentiles benchmarked against the United States. The six trades are electricians, plumbers and pipefitters, equipment operators, carpenters, HVAC technicians, and line workers. South Dakota prices above the national median in two of the six, with carpenters showing the widest gap at −20.5% and equipment operators the narrowest gap at −0.6%. Prepared under methodology WIL-CBM-1.0; this is a public-data profile, not a peer survey.
ER  -