
Brett Watson
23:25 - 24:13
"between 2015, the start of the Alaska recession, and 2023, this is the most recent year that we have really good data for federal spending apportioned across states. Federal spending grew by about $8.7 billion in nominal terms"
“between 2015, the start of the Alaska recession, and 2023, this is the most recent year that we have really good data for federal spending apportioned across states. Federal spending grew by about $8.7 billion in nominal terms”
So what I'd like to do is just share some, some statistics on what's been going on with federal spending in Alaska kind of over this key period of the last 10 years as we've experienced this economic recovery. So between 2015, the start of the Alaska recession, and 2023, this is the most recent year that we have really good data for federal spending apportioned across states. Federal spending grew by about $8.7 billion in nominal terms, and I'm going to use nominal terms here as opposed to inflation-adjusted terms because I'll compare this to nominal, nominal dollars in my next slide. But just be aware that there's been some pretty significant inflation over this period. So that's not real spending power of the federal government, but nominal spending.
UAA economists say federal spending drove about half of Alaska's growth since 2015 — and the state is now losing federal workers faster than most, hitting rural areas hardest.
