Alaska's three urban populations are becoming ever more deeply divided.
There are the "Job Secure," meaning those who work in the health care industry or for the state and federal governments; the "Job Tenuous," meaning those who work for virtually any other employer including local government; and the "Job Less."
A look beyond the happy-face total employment numbers that are available for 2010 tells us how deep those divisions are becoming.
But first a qualified admission: Last January I went on record with a forecast that predicted a 1 to 2 percent decline in statewide nonagricultural employment for both 2010 and 2011. So far that forecast looks to be wrong in fact because total employment is putting on a happy face.
It was wrong in fact because good data, that is to say data from the Alaska Department of Labor's Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, show a 0.5 percent increase in statewide nonagricultural employment through June 2010 rather than the decline that I projected last year. What is more, preliminary data for the third quarter show virtually no year-to-year change.
But there is much more to it than that.
While employment in Alaska state government, federal government and the industry called "education & health services" went up compared with a year earlier by 4,333 jobs in the second quarter of 2010, the rest of the economy shed 1,712 jobs. Health care alone showed an increase of 2,586 jobs. State and federal government reported a combined gain of 1,672 jobs.
In contrast, all -- repeat ALL -- of the broadly defined industries in the Job Tenuous sector (local government, construction, manufacturing, trade ...) lost jobs between the second quarter of 2009 and the second quarter of 2010. Underlining this malaise is the fact that on balance there were 68 fewer employers reporting in the second quarter of 2010 than a year earlier. Worse, all of this ignores the self- employed, who are technically still employed but who have watched their take-home pay fall like a stone over the past two years.
This is not intended to be a rant against the good fortune of those employed by Alaska's state government, by federal government and by the health care industry, but it is a fact that what I am now dubbing the "Job Secure" sector is virtually immune to economic downturns: the feds because the Federal Reserve can print money, Alaska state government because oil prices are rising and the health care industry because the demand for health care by the handsomely insured is not tempered by the higher prices that hospitals and clinics continually impose.
The time might finally have come to reassess the damage being done to the social fabric of Alaska by these deepening divisions in the economy. There is a reason the tea party movement has been successful; the Job Tenuous and the Job Less are on the outside looking in and do not like it.
So what will be done?
For an answer we have to look to certain key players. Given his long association with the late Gov. Wally Hickel, current Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell is one of those players. If he really believes what his former boss proclaimed for lo those many years and what he himself proclaimed during his recent election campaign, he is probably urging Gov. Sean Parnell (behind closed doors, of course) to "Damn the uncertainty, full speed ahead." Full speed ahead, that is, with respect to large-scale developments like a gas pipeline to Valdez and the Susitna River dam.
In this, the lieutenant governor almost certainly has a lot of support. Given the ragged state of the Alaska economy, I suspect that many more Alaskans are now willing to consider bold action than was true a few years ago. But whether that is the best course to follow, and whether there are now enough Alaskans ready to be bold, are still open questions.
David M. Reaume holds a doctoral degree in economics. He lived and worked in Alaska for 22 years before moving to Washington state in 1999. His opinion column appears every month in the Anchorage Daily News.
DAVID REAUME
COMMENT