
Brock Wilson
60:01 - 60:54
"I think for me, one of the frames that I carry is that I would think about the federal workforce as potentially a complement to our base, to our industry, rather than a substitute. For example, you know, cruise ships bring in people, those people go to Denali, and the complement being that if Denali no longer has park rangers, people don't go to Denali because there's no ability to get basic access"
“I think for me, one of the frames that I carry is that I would think about the federal workforce as potentially a complement to our base, to our industry, rather than a substitute. For example, you know, cruise ships bring in people, those people go to Denali, and the complement being that if Denali no longer has park rangers, people don't go to Denali because there's no ability to get basic access”
Yeah, I think I want to pick up just one last thing, which is I think for me, one of the frames that I carry is that I would think about the federal workforce as potentially a complement to our base, to our industry, rather than a substitute. For example, you know, cruise ships bring in people, those people go to Denali, and the complement being that if Denali no longer has park rangers, people don't go to Denali because there's no ability to get basic access, etc. So a lot of our industries rely on our federal counterparts to be able to provide the services that they do so that they can do their business. And so this is to say that it's a little— I'm a little cautious about the framing of Well, if federal workforce goes down, can we see an increase elsewhere? Because it might be the case that that also declines private industry because that private industry needed the federal workforce to be working for their industry to be working.
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.
