{"id":25167,"date":"2016-03-17T08:04:15","date_gmt":"2016-03-17T15:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/alaskas-construction-industry-could-lose-3000-jobs-in-2016\/"},"modified":"2016-03-17T08:04:15","modified_gmt":"2016-03-17T15:04:15","slug":"alaskas-construction-industry-could-lose-3000-jobs-in-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/alaskas-construction-industry-could-lose-3000-jobs-in-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Alaska&#8217;s construction industry could lose 3,000 jobs in 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>ANCHORAGE \u2014<\/strong> Officials predict Alaska\u2019s construction industry could lose as much as 18 percent of its workforce this year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou take 18,000 construction workers in the state and 18 percent of them if there\u2019s a decline, that could amount to over 3,000 jobs not being here next year,\u201d said John Mackinnon, executive director of the Alaska Association of General Contractors.<\/p>\n<p>The news comes after AGC announced that Alaska was one of only six states that didn\u2019t show growth in the construction industry from 2015 to 2016, the Anchorage news station KTUU-TV reported. Most of the states with declining construction industries rely heavily on resources, AGC said.<\/p>\n<p>Mackinnon said the state\u2019s budget deficit has not yet affected construction contracts because the funds being spent this year were set aside several years ago.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe money we are spending this year was appropriated three, four, five years ago. The money that wasn\u2019t appropriated last year because of the budget, that money won\u2019t be spent for a year or two.\u201d Mackinnon said. \u201cWe can handle a year or two of a down capital budget, but you get beyond that and you\u2019ll see significant cuts in construction employment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The state has been struggling with a multibillion-dollar deficit amid low oil prices.<\/p>\n<p>State economist Neal Fried said the expected job cuts are not a surprise as the construction industry is a reflection of the state\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cConstruction really is an accommodator for the rest of our economy. When the economy grows it means you build more facilities, and when it is slowing down the opposite occurs,\u201d Freid said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ANCHORAGE \u2014 Officials predict Alaska\u2019s construction industry could lose as much as 18 percent of its workforce this year. \u201cYou take 18,000 construction workers in the state and 18 percent of them if there\u2019s a decline, that could amount to over 3,000 jobs not being here next year,\u201d said John Mackinnon, executive director of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-25167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25167"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=25167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}