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

About one in six people in the Kusilvak Census Area's labor force was unemployed and looking for work in May. At 16.1 percent, it was the highest rate in Alaska.

The lowest was Denali Borough at 2.5 percent, more than six times lower. In between: Bethel Census Area at 10.1 percent, 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.

Those regions also carry more federal-payroll exposure per capita than cities do, University of Alaska Anchorage economist Brock Wilson told a Commonwealth North forum in June, so "these national-level changes are going to be falling harder on these rural parts of Alaska." Alaska lost 2,100 jobs in July against a year earlier, with federal and state payrolls down 2,300 combined and seafood processing shedding 1,000 amid weak salmon runs.

At the same forum, economist Bob Loeffler pointed to a map of federal-employment concentration on which Denali Borough ranks high, attributing it to the number of people Denali National Park employs. That map measures federal employment, not joblessness.

The statewide picture is less settled than the regional one. The Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development put the seasonally adjusted May rate at 4.6 percent, unchanged from April. The current federal time series puts May at 4.1 percent, down from 4.9. Neither source explains the gap. By July the statewide rate was 3.7 percent, with 13,647 Alaskans unemployed out of a labor force of 373,372. August figures are due Sept. 18.