Alaska’s August job count was down 10.5 percent from last August, a loss of 37,000 jobs, according to a release from the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development. Pandemic disruptions continued to spur large over-the-year losses in all industries except federal government, which was up 1,400 jobs due to temporary hiring for the 2020 Census.
The state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate declined from 11.6 percent in July to 7.4 percent in August, but the Department of Labor and Workforce Development says that the decline was more the result of COVID-related disruptions to the statistical methods the Bureau of Labor Statistics uses to calculate rates, rather than an improvement that significant in Alaska’s economy.
The Kenai Peninsula’s preliminary August unemployment rate sits at 6.8 percent, which is an improvement from July’s 11.7 percent. That is still high enough to mark the highest rate in the Gulf Coast Region, and is worse than Anchorage’s 6.6 percent.
Unemployment insurance claims dropped by about 6,000 from July to August, but remained nearly seven times higher than last August. For now and the coming months, job numbers and unemployment insurance claims will be more reliable measures of the state’s economic health than the unemployment rate, which is a complicated measure that relies on a household survey that has been harder to conduct since the virus hit.
The same technical issues rolled down to Alaska’s not-seasonally adjusted unemployment rates for boroughs and census areas. Consequently, the August rates suggest a rosier picture of local economies than the unemployment insurance claims and regional job numbers support.