Kusilvak unemployment hit 16.1% in May, six times Denali Borough's rate

About one in six workers in the Kusilvak Census Area's labor force was unemployed and looking for work in May. The area's 16.1% unemployment rate was the highest in Alaska, more than six times Denali Borough's rate of 2.5%, the state's lowest, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics figures compiled by USAFacts.

Statewide figures conflict. The Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development said in its June 19 release that the state's seasonally adjusted rate was 4.6% in May, unchanged from April. The current BLS time series puts May at 4.1%, down from 4.9% in April, with 14,987 Alaskans counted as unemployed. Neither source explains the gap.

Other off-road regions ran far above the statewide figures: Bethel Census Area at 10.1%, Yukon-Koyukuk at 9.4% and Northwest Arctic Borough at 8.8%. Anchorage, the state's largest labor market, sat at 4.7%. Every high-rate region in the May data lies off the road system. Rural payrolls also depend on federal jobs that are shrinking. Alaska lost 2,100 jobs in July compared with a year earlier, a 0.6% decline, with federal and state government payrolls down 2,300 combined and seafood processing shedding 1,000 jobs amid weak salmon runs.

At a Commonwealth North forum on federal spending in June, University of Alaska Anchorage economist Bob Loeffler pointed to a map of federal-employment concentration on which Denali Borough ranks high. "Why is Denali so high? Well, the answer there is Denali National Park. They have a lot of employees," he said. That map measures federal employment, not joblessness.

Economist Brock Wilson, speaking at the same forum, said rural areas carry more federal-payroll exposure per capita than cities do, so "these national-level changes are going to be falling harder on these rural parts of Alaska."

The statewide rate dropped to 3.7% in July, with 13,647 Alaskans unemployed out of a civilian labor force of 373,372 and 359,725 employed. August figures are due Sept. 18.