Oil workers top Alaska earners; wages up 9%

Allen Baker

PNA Contributing Writer

Oil industry workers were the top earners in Alaska in 2000, according to the Alaska Department of Labor, and average wages in the industry rose 9 percent compared with 1999.

Average earnings for a worker in oil and gas extraction totaled $90,432 in 2000, the last year for which figures have been compiled. That was up from $82,848 the prior year.

For Alaskan workers in general, average pay was $35,125 in 2000, up just 5 percent from $33,516 the year before.

Alaska wages exceeded the national average for years after the pipeline boom and the succeeding economic might of the oil industry. But by 2000, the scales had shifted the other way as oil industry jobs declined. The average Alaskan made $171 less that year than the average American worker, and $4458 less than the average worker in the Pacific states of Alaska, Hawaii, California, Oregon and Washington.

But wages for the Alaska oil industry workers who remain, along with those of miners, are far above the rest of the work force, according to the figures collected for the U.S. Department of labor.

“They’re sort of in another league,” said Neal Fried, a state labor analyst. “They’re a bigger part of our economy because of that higher pay.”

At the other end of the scale, those in retail work made an average of $19,729 a year in Alaska.

Government workers made a bit more than the overall average for the state, with private industry jobs paying an average of $33,478, which was $1,827 below the national average.

The report is based on unemployment insurance data, and so it doesn’t measure pay for self-employed workers and employees in very small businesses who aren’t part of the insurance program.