Alaskanomics: Alaska's Unemployment Rate at 6.7 Percent in May

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Alaska’s Department of Labor and Workforce Development released the Unemployment rate for May this morning. The seasonally adjusted rate remained virtually unchanged and sits at 6.7 percent in May. The National rate is 4.3 percent in the past month.

The preliminary employment numbers show a 1.8 percent drop in jobs from May 2016. The drop equates to approximately 6,000 jobs. Most losses were seen in oil and gas, followed by construction, professional and business services.

There are a couple of sectors that added jobs and they include health care and leisure and hospitality. Local and federal government jobs are also up in 2017. Much of the growth in local government comes from tribal government jobs, which are classified as local government.

As per usual, May’s not-seasonally adjusted unemployment rate dropped two-tenths of a percent from April and stands at 6.8 percent. This is due to the increase in tourism and construction jobs. The lowest rates in the state were all in Southeast Alaska with Juneau and Sitka at 4.1 percent and Skagway at 4.2 percent. Kusilvak Census Area has the highest rate in the state at 21.1 percent.

Full employment stats can be found at http://live.laborstats.alaska.gov/ces/