The jobs count for the month of June, as reported by the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development, was up 5.6% compared to June 2020, but there are still lingering issues due to the coronavirus pandemic, which affected the U.S. and Alaska’s economy. There are a plethora of positions from working as a dishwasher to being a police officer available in Alaska. The other issue is that job seekers can’t find jobs.
Tim Dillon, Executive Director for the Kenai Peninsula Economic Development District speaks to KSRM on the jobs problem:
“Part of the problem is you have everybody going after the same people right now. If somebody is willing to pay somebody a little bit more or sweeten the pie with benefits or whatever, they’re having more luck than somebody that has a 30 hour a week job that is minimum wage. People are being a little bit more particular.”
The other problem, Dillon said, are the lack of J1 workers:
“If we have the influx of the foreign students that would come over for the summer, none of them were just working one job. Say down in Homer, they are working at Land’s End during the day and then they’re taking another 6-8 hour shift at McDonald’s or at Safeway. It’s not just impacting one place, it’s impacting multiple places. We didn’t see the influx of J1’s this year and that’s also an issue that’s affecting a lot of the tourism hospitality industry folks.”
Dillon says that people are shifting:
“You have a variety of businesses that are only open four days a week now instead of five days a week. They’re trying to weather the storm and see what they can do to get back on their feet and make sure that they’re going to continue to be financially viable before they start dumping more cash into things. We have the additional ARPA money that’s going to come through in September, but people need to remember, there’s only a total of $90 million that’s going to hit statewide for businesses. It’s kind of a waiting game for some folks, but then others are sweetening the pot and saying ‘this is what we can do’ and they’re finding that it’s more beneficial to them.”
The economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic has, from Dillon’s point of view, really opened people’s eyes to force them to ensure that they have a business plan that’s based in reality. Moving forward, economic trends seem to indicate that the benefits package is very important to job seekers.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics, in December 2020, reported that the U.S. economy lost 22 million jobs from February to April 2020, which rebounded to 11 million but slowed.
