Alaska is leading the nation in job growth, and federal funding is a primary reason. That was a key takeaway from a virtual forum Thursday with economists from University of Alaska Anchorage’s Institute of Social and Economic Research.
Brett Watson is an assistant professor of economics at UAA. It took the economy longer to recover from the COVID pandemic, he said, but now, it’s the opposite. Alaska has been leading the nation in employment growth since late 2022, growing at almost twice the national rate of 3.3%.
The two sectors in particular that’ve driven that growth, he said, are healthcare and construction…