Employment in Alaska drops again

Alan Bailey

Petroleum News

Employment in Alaska in March fell 0.8 percent relative to March 2017, a loss of about 2,600 jobs over the year, the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development has reported.

Of various work sectors in the state, job losses were highest in the oil and gas industry, with losses in the retail industry also being relatively high. Job losses in the construction industry continued but flattened somewhat relative to previous months. Employment in federal, state and local government all saw modest declines, with job losses in local government mainly appearing in public education. Health care, on the other hand, saw a 2.7 percent increase in employment.

The year-on-year drop in employment during Alaska’s current recession peaked between September 2016 and May 2017, easing somewhat since then.

The state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate has remained static at 7.3 percent over the past month, a figure somewhat higher than the national unemployment rate of 4.1 percent. When not seasonally adjusted, the unemployment rate fell by 0.3 percentage points between February and March to 7.9 percent.

In the past few years the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in Alaska has remained relatively constant, while the unemployment rate in the United States as a whole has dropped significantly. Since the unemployment rate represents the number of unemployed people as a percentage of the population in work or seeking work, the Alaska unemployment rate presumably does not reflect the number of people who have left the state or stopped seeking work after losing their jobs.

In Alaska, the unemployment rate has increased slightly in Petersburg and Kusilvak, while remaining steady in the Aleutians West. In all other 26 boroughs around the state the unemployment rate has dropped. Unemployment is particularly high in rural areas with limited year-round employment opportunities, and low in the Aleutians West and East, where there are winter fisheries, the department reported.

- ALAN BAILEY