Construction firms across the country are having a hard time finding qualified hourly craft workers to hire, and Alaska is no exception.
That's according to results released Wednesday from a survey conducted by the Associated General Contractors of America trade group, which asked construction firms about the availability of workers, recruitment challenges, worker pay and more.
In Alaska, 55 percent of contractors said they were having a hard time filling some hourly craft positions, which include specialists like carpenters, electricians, roofers and plumbers.
"I was surprised that it was that high," said Brian Turmail, a spokesman for AGC of America.
Fifteen percent of contractors in Alaska also had a hard time filling some salaried field positions, the survey found.
Nationally, 69 percent of nearly 1,500 survey respondents said they are having a hard time filling hourly craft positions. That's less than last year, when 79 percent said it was a challenge to fill such jobs. The 2015 survey didn't break out specific results for Alaska to compare to 2016.
Craft worker shortages were most severe in the Midwest, followed by the South.
"With the construction industry in most of the country now several years into a recovery, many firms have gone from worrying about not having enough work to not having enough workers," said Stephen Sandherr, CEO of the AGC, in a statement.
While the rest of the country is in recovery after the Great Recession, the opposite is taking place in Alaska, which some say is heading for, or already in, a recession.
The Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development predicted at the start of 2016 construction would be one of the hardest-hit industries as the state faces economic headwinds directly linked to the drop in the price of oil.
Alaska is likely headed for its first year of job losses since 2009, according to the labor department projection, and aside from construction those losses were expected to be mostly isolated to the oil and gas sector, as well as state government.
From July 2015 to July this year, the construction sector lost 1,100 jobs, according to data on the labor department's website.
Over the next 12 months, 67 percent of contractors in Alaska said they don't plan to hire additional or replacement salaried field personnel, and 25 percent said they don't have any jobs to fill. Thirty-seven percent said they plan to hire more hourly craft workers in the next year, for expansion.
Forty-two percent of Alaska contractors surveyed said they have increased pay and/or benefits to hourly craft workers or salaried personnel in the last year because of the difficulty of filling jobs.
When it comes to the talent pool, 45 percent of construction firms in Alaska said they think the local market for supplying well-trained craft workers is fair, while 20 percent said it was poor.
The state's capital budget has also dropped dramatically since 2013, Alaska Dispatch News reported in June. That can hinder private investment as well.
In Alaska, and other states such as Kansas and West Virginia, Turmail said, "contractors are spending more time looking for work than looking for workers."