Alaska’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for July was 7.7 percent. June’s preliminary rate was unchanged from 7.9 percent. The comparable national rate was 9.5 percent in July. Alaska’s rate continues to trend downwards from its high of 8.6 percent in December of last year.
To read the complete press release, click here.
The number of foreclosures fell in the 2nd quarter of 2010 from the previous quarter, according to new data from the State Recorder’s Office. There were 353 residential foreclosures in the 2nd quarter of 2010 statewide, slightly lower than first quarter’s 361. However, there were 92 more foreclosures in the 2nd quarter of 2010 than the 2nd quarter of 2009 – an increase of 35% over-the-year.
Residential foreclosures, statewide, 1Q 2005 - 2Q 2010
Anchorage and Mat-Su still lead the state in the number of foreclosures, followed distantly by Fairbanks and the Kenai/Soldotna area. Foreclosures fell from the previous quarter in all of those areas except Anchorage, where the number of foreclosures increased from 117 to 131 in the 2nd quarter of 2010.
Residential foreclosures, Selected Regions, 1Q 2005 - 2Q 2010
In the first half of 2010, consumer prices in Anchorage increased by 2.5 percent from one year prior. Most of the increase is due to inflation in gasoline and healthcare prices, which grew 31.0 and 6.2 percent over the year respectively.
Not all components of the consumer price index (CPI) increased over the year. A small decline in the cost of food and beverages, -0.6 percent, is good news to anyone who’s a fan of eating and drinking.
Gasoline prices may be up, but they’re not as high as they were in 2008. Although gas prices have fallen from those highs, they’ve been climbing recently.
The over-the-year health care cost increase is just one more step in its long climb. Over the last decade, health care costs have increased by 53.9 percent – while the overall index has increased by 29.1 percent over the same period.
Anchorage Inflation Rate and CPI, half-yearly, 2000 - 2010
The CPI is only calculated in urban areas, so Anchorage is the only metro area with a CPI in Alaska. Anchorage is one of the smallest cities for which a CPI is calculated. For more information about the Anchorage CPI, check out the BLS site here.
Alaska’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for June fell slightly to 7.9 percent. May’s preliminary rate was revised down one-tenth of a percentage point to 8.2 percent.
The comparable national jobless rate for June was 9.5 percent, down from 9.7 percent in May. Alaska’s unemployment rate fell below 8 percent for the first time in 13 months. June was the 20th consecutive month that Alaska’s rate was lower than the nation’s.
For the complete press release, including area-level unemployment rate and industry employment levels, go here.
For the third year in a row, Providence Health & Services remained the only private-sector employer in the state with more than 4,000 employees. The company added 200 workers in 2009, continuing its recent trend of growth. Wal-Mart/Sam’s Club remained the second largest and was the only other private employer with more than 3,000 employees.
Alaska’s 10 largest firms in 2009 were the same group as in 2008, with some changes in ranking within the top 10. This list has been fairly static; six of the top 10 employers in 2009 were on the list a decade earlier.
Alaska’s 100 largest firms employed 76,300 wage and salary workers in 2009, or 32 percent of all private-sector wage and salary employment. The top-100 firms generally perform better than the private-sector as a whole. Employment growth in 2009 was flat for top-100 firms, better than the 1 percent decline in Alaska’s overall private-sector employment.
If you include public-sector employers, only four of the top 10 employers are private-sector. The top employer, including the public sector, is the military. There were over 23,000 uniformed military personnel stationed in Alaska in 2009.
For much more information on Alaska’s top-100 employers, and the complete list of the top 100 private-sector employers, check out this July 2010 article by Neal Fried.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released a study on the gender pay gap for 2009. From the BLS,
“In 2009, women who were full-time wage and salary workers had median weekly earnings of $657, or about 80 percent of the $819 median for their male counterparts. In 1979, the first year for which comparable earnings data are available, women earned about 62 percent as much as men. After a gradual rise in the 1980s and 1990s, the women’s-to-men’s earnings ratio peaked at 81 percent in 2005 and 2006.”
Keep your eyes peeled for upcoming research from the Alaska Department of Labor on the gender pay gap in Alaska. To read the full BLS report, go here. For older Alaska-specific research on the gender pay differential, check out this article.
Alaska’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for May fell slightly to 8.3 percent. April’s preliminary rate was unchanged at 8.4 percent.
The comparable national rate was 9.7 percent for May, down from 9.9 percent in April.
The unemployment rates for both Alaska and the U.S remain higher than a year ago, but Alaska’s picture is still healthier than the nation’s. Alaska’s rate continues to trend downward from its high of 8.6 percent in December of last year.
The frenzied bustle of May signals the beginning of summer and an upswing in seasonal activity. Construction work is moving into high gear, and Alaska’s fishing and visitor industries are organizing a work force for three to four months of hyperactivity.
For more information, including unemployment rates for boroughs and census areas, check out the press release.
Petersburg, Alaska. Photo by Hans-Jürgen Hübner
Ask any Alaskan what they know about Petersburg and if they know nothing else, you can be ganske darn sikkert they’ll mention at least two things: fishing and Norway. Perhaps no other mostly-nonnative community in Alaska identifies so strongly with its cultural past as Petersburg.
Named after Peter Buschmann, a Norwegian immigrant who opened a cannery on his homestead in the late 1890s, the island community is located about halfway between Juneau and Ketchikan at the north entrance of the Wrangell Narrows. Access to rich fishing waters and a picturesque Southeast Alaska location – that probably felt much like their native Norway – helped attract Buschmann’s fellow Norwegians and other northern Europeans to the area.
By 1910, the population of Petersburg had grown to nearly 600, and papers were filed to incorporate the community as a municipality. One hundred years later, residents are busy boiling whitefish to prepare lutefisk, rolling the lefse and donning their horned Viking helmets in celebration of their community’s centennial. But Petersburg isn’t all about rosemaling and little shrimp.
Still a vibrant fishing community, the population of Petersburg is now nearly 3,000. Many of the city’s residents still earn their primary income from fishing or processing, and the Icicle Seafoods plant was the largest employer in 2008. Local government was the largest single industry sector in 2008, accounting for nearly a quarter of all wage and salary employment in the area. Tourism is a growing sector in Petersburg, with more than 50,000 visitors stopping in Petersburg each year.
To learn more about Petersburg’s population and economy, check out this article from the May 2010 Alaska Economic Trends magazine.
A recent analysis of Alaska’s resident workforce showed there is a larger percentage of older adults working now than there was ten years ago. The analysis looked at two groups of resident workers; those that are approaching retirement age (55 to 64) and those that are at or over normal retirement age (65+). In 2008 (the most recent year for which data are available), the percentage of resident workers between the ages of 55 and 64 was 12.4 percent, up from 6.7 percent ten years ago. At the same time, the percentage of workers age 65+ was 2.4 percent, up from 1.3 percent a decade prior.
The percentage of wages earned by older workers has almost doubled over the past ten years. In 2008, workers between the ages of 55 and 64 rose to 16.2 percent of total wages, up from 8.2 percent ten years ago. At the same time, the percentage of wages earned by workers 65+ rose to 1.9 percent, up from 0.7 percent.
One major difference when comparing wages between 1998 and 2008 is that median wages maxed out at an earlier age in 1998. In 1998, median wages reached their peak at $33,614 at age 50. In 2008, median wages didn’t max out until age 54, at $42,100.
Alaska workers' median wages by age, 1998 and 2008
State and local government were the two industries with the highest percentage of older workers and the highest median worker ages. In the private sector, education and health services had the largest percentage of older workers.
Occupations related to teaching stood out as having a high percentage of older workers. Postsecondary teachers specifically had the highest median age at 54.5, as well as the largest percentage of workers in the 55 to 64 age group – 42.9 percent.
For the complete article, see the May 2010 issue of Alaska Economic Trends.
Most people know Florence Nightingale as a nurse extraordinaire as well as an accomplished writer and educator.
What many people may not know is that this English nurse was quite a statistician. She is generally credited with inventing an early form of the modern pie chart known as the polar area diagram, sometimes called the “Nightingale Rose” or “Nightingale Coxcomb” diagram.
The original coxcomb graph illustrated by Florence Nightingale. Click on the graph to see a recently redrawn version.
Nightingale returned from Turkey and the Crimean War in 1856, upset at the number of avoidable deaths that had occurred in the field hospital she had managed. She was determined to convince Queen Victoria that reform was needed in the British military health service and she planned to use statistics to do it.
With the help of epidemiologist William Farr, she created a report that was unusual for the time because she intended to persuade using charts and graphs. She used her diagram to demonstrate to the Queen the numbers of deaths by month by cause – three variables (no small task for a pie chart of any era).
The Queen was apparently impressed as she called for an official inquiry and changes were implemented to improve the sanitary and health care practices of the military health service.
Nightingale’s charts were not without detractors (as are modern pie charts – some people hate them). A stacked bar graph may have illustrated her point more dramatically and one of the criticisms of her rose chart is that deaths would be better represented as proportional to area not by radius as Ms. Nightingale chose to use in an early version (she later corrected this).
Besides Queen Victoria, her charts apparently made an impression at The Economist. Florence Nightingale’s chart is included in a group of three graphics the publication considers among history’s best – no small feat for a woman also busy being the mother of modern nursing.
There were about 5,500 registered nurses in Alaska in 2008, and almost all of them owe credit to Florence Nightingale for advancements in their field. To read more about nursing and Alaska’s health care industry, check out the March 2010 issue of Alaska Economic Trends.