Workers' Compensation Rates in South Dakota (2026)

State Overview

South Dakota does not compel an employer to carry workers' comp. SDCL 62-5-2 says an employer "may secure the payment of compensation", and SDCL 62-5-7 — "Failure to secure payment as election not to operate under title" — deems a private employer that has not complied with SDCL 62-5-1 to 62-5-5 to have "elected not to operate under the provisions of this title". The price of going without coverage is therefore not a fine but the loss of the exclusive remedy: under SDCL 62-3-11 the injured employee of such an employer may sue at law, or proceed in circuit court under the title for the SDCL 62-4-1 benefits "plus twice the amount of other compensation allowable under this title". Rates are built on NCCI advisory loss costs on a July 1 year, and the state has below-average rates (statutes read 2026-10-19).

How to find a South Dakota workers' comp class code from a job description

There is no South Dakota workers' comp class code for a job title. NCCI files the classifications used in South Dakota, and the NCCI rules are what an auditor applies, and what gets classified is the employer's business — not the separate employments, occupations or operations inside it. "Machinist", "CNC operator", "general construction labor" and "data entry" are therefore work that sits inside whichever classification describes the business, not values you can look up on their own.

NCCI publishes South Dakota's classifications in the Basic Manual for Workers Compensation and Employers Liability Insurance for South Dakota (no South Dakota edition date, because South Dakota adopts no edition — it is the rare NCCI state that neither designates a rating organization nor incorporates a classification manual by rule. NCCI is licensed as a rating organization under SDCL 58-24-35 and 58-24-36 and files the loss costs under SDCL 58-24-10, and that filing is the whole of it: SDCL 58-24-12 says in terms that "nothing contained in this chapter may be construed as requiring any insurer to become a member of or a subscriber to any rating organization", and SDCL 58-24-9 that uniformity among insurers in rate-making "is neither required nor prohibited". A sweep of all 5,985 rule references in ARSD article 20:06 — the Division of Insurance's entire rule article, 2.08 million characters, in which "insurance" appears 2,014 times — returns no mention of the Basic Manual, of NCCI or of loss costs anywhere. The version in force is therefore whatever NCCI last filed for the July 1 South Dakota loss-cost year). To confirm the classification for a specific business, use the Division of Insurance's workers' compensation page, which carries the property/casualty rate and form filing requirements, the division's laws, administrative rules, bulletins and memorandums, and the schedule rating worksheet of Bulletin 10-04 — but no per-class listing, because no South Dakota statute or rule requires one to be published, published by the South Dakota Division of Insurance rather than by NCCI — that is the filed authority for South Dakota, and a code quoted from another state's manual is not. South Dakota argues a classification in the same chapter as every other casualty line, and the ladder is short enough to state in full. Under SDCL 58-24-28 a rating organization, or an insurer that makes its own rates, must on written request and for a reasonable charge furnish an affected insured "all pertinent information as to such rate". SDCL 58-24-29 then requires it to provide a means within South Dakota whereby any person aggrieved by the application of its rating system may be heard on how that system was applied to the insurance afforded them, and if the request is neither granted nor rejected within thirty days the applicant "may proceed in the same manner as if his application had been rejected". From there SDCL 58-24-30 gives any affected party thirty days from written notice of the action to appeal to the director of the Division of Insurance, who holds a hearing on not less than ten days' written notice and may affirm or reverse. Above the statute sits NCCI's own Basic Manual Appendix G process, under which South Dakota is one of four states — with Idaho, Iowa and Rhode Island — whose disputes go to a three-member Board drawn from the state's candidate board member list rather than to the full list itself.

Two things about South Dakota catch out an employer arriving from another NCCI state, and they pull in opposite directions. The first is how little the state asserts over the classifications: workers' compensation is regulated inside one generic casualty rate chapter — SDCL 58-24-2 applies chapter 58-24 to "all forms of casualty insurance… workers' compensation, and to any combination of any of the foregoing" — with no designated uniform classification system, no manual adopted by reference, and SDCL 58-24-7 saying only that risks "may be grouped by classifications for the establishment of rates and minimum premiums". The second is that the one workers'-compensation-specific mechanism South Dakota does add is more open than most states', and it runs the other way. SDCL 58-24-66 requires a rating organization to give the director fifteen days' notice of its intent to make a workers' compensation loss cost filing, and SDCL 58-24-67 then requires the director, within thirty days of that notice, to schedule an informal hearing and notify "organizations of purchasers of workers' compensation insurance and insurers who have registered with the director to receive such notices". That hearing is automatic and the regulator convenes it — unlike Iowa, where Iowa Code § 515A.6(7) only gets a policyholder a hearing if it files a written demand within fifteen days. Separately, and this is the part most readers get wrong: carrying workers' compensation is not compulsory in South Dakota at all. SDCL 62-5-2 says an employer "may secure the payment of compensation", and SDCL 62-5-7 deems an employer that has not complied with SDCL 62-5-1 to 62-5-5 to have "elected not to operate under the provisions of this title" — so the price of going without coverage is not a fine but the loss of the exclusive remedy, since SDCL 62-3-11 then lets that employer's injured employee sue at law or proceed in circuit court under the title for the SDCL 62-4-1 benefits "plus twice the amount of other compensation allowable under this title". The classification question is the same either way, but the employer asking it may have no carrier and no auditor in the picture.

the Division of Insurance's workers' compensation page, which carries the property/casualty rate and form filing requirements, the division's laws, administrative rules, bulletins and memorandums, and the schedule rating worksheet of Bulletin 10-04 — but no per-class listing, because no South Dakota statute or rule requires one to be published (official South Dakota lookup)

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