Alaska's unemployment map tracks one thing: the road system

Alaska has two labor markets, and the dividing line is whether you can drive there.

Unemployment ran 2.5% in Denali Borough this May and 4.7% in Anchorage. In Kusilvak Census Area, out on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, it was 16.1% — the highest in the state, and roughly six times Denali's. The next three highest were Bethel at 10.1%, Yukon-Koyukuk at 9.4%, and Northwest Arctic at 8.8%.

Every region at the top of that list is off the road system. Every region at the bottom is on it.

What that means on the ground is a thin cash economy. In villages of a few hundred people reachable only by plane, boat, or snowmachine, most wage jobs belong to institutions — the school, the clinic, the city and tribal offices, the airport, the post office. Beyond that, the money has come from commercial fishing, which is why the collapse of Yukon king and chum runs hit so hard. It took the paycheck and the freezer at the same time.

The rate also misses most of what people actually do. Subsistence harvest — salmon, waterfowl, seal, berries — feeds households across those regions and appears nowhere in a labor survey.