Pierre, South Dakota

Unemployment across Hughes County, SD, which contains Pierre, is 1.7%, lower than in 99% of the 4,226 measured US cities.

Employment across Hughes County, SD, which contains Pierre, fell 3.8% over the past year, to 9,064 employed residents.

39% of adults hold a four-year degree, higher than 80% of measured US cities.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes city-level labor data only for places of 25,000 or more. This is the figure for Hughes County, SD, which contains this city.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s house price index for the non-metropolitan parts of South Dakota is up 47% over five years, and up 3.1% over the last year. It follows repeat sales of the same homes, so it measures price change rather than which homes happened to sell.

Homeowners here who pay a tax bill pay a median of $2,632 a year in real estate taxes, about 1.14% of the median home value.

HUD’s Fair Market Rent for a two-bedroom, set near the 40th percentile of recent new leases, is $1,034, close to the $983 tenants already here pay.

At HUD’s Fair Market Rent of $1,034 a month for a two-bedroom, keeping rent to 30% of income takes a household income of about $41,400 a year, about 53% of the median household income here of $77,672.

The typical renter household here spends 25% of its income on rent, below the 30% threshold at which a household is considered cost-burdened. Median gross rent runs $983 a month.

A median home at $230,700 costs 2.4 times the median income of its owner-occupied households, $94,836, close to the historic benchmark for an affordable market.

These measures come from the same ACS release as the income they are compared with. They compare housing cost with local earnings only: transport, groceries, healthcare, insurance and taxes are not in them. How to read affordability, the two rent figures.

5 of the twelve months have a normal average temperature between 55°F and 80°F. July averages a high of 88°F and January a low of 9°F.

Normal annual precipitation is 20.2 inches, including 37.2 inches of snow.

Air quality measures a median index of 8, in the Good band, and no day in the year passed 100.

Climate figures are thirty-year normals, not current conditions. Air quality is measured by EPA monitors and published by county only where a monitor sits; a county without one shows nothing rather than an estimate, and a county reading is still the county’s. How to read climate and air quality.

Each of these is absent for a reason, not by oversight. The Area Score is calculated without them; the weighting is on the methodology page.

Cost of living

Price parities are published for metropolitan areas, and this place lies outside one.

Taxes

Income and sales taxes are not published: no source covers them nationally with a method open enough to check. Property taxes are shown in the housing section but are not part of the score. Cost of living is published where the Bureau of Economic Analysis measures it, though not for this place. Nothing here is individualized tax advice.

Anything about a specific address

Every figure describes an area, not a street or a house.

Put Pierre side by side with a similar place.

Profile recalculated October 8, 2026. Recalculation is not the same as new source data — each figure above shows the period its source actually covers. Read the full methodology, or every source with how often each updates.

Every ZIP area in Pierre with census figures of its own, largest first. The ones linked below diverge enough from the city as a whole to carry a full profile; the rest track Pierre closely, so their figures are here rather than on a page that would repeat this one. An Area Score is calculated for published profiles only, which is why it is blank on those rows.