{"id":272,"date":"2018-06-15T10:03:00","date_gmt":"2018-06-15T17:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/alaska-job-losses-continue-as-recession-enters-third-year\/"},"modified":"2018-08-13T12:55:34","modified_gmt":"2018-08-13T19:55:34","slug":"alaska-job-losses-continue-as-recession-enters-third-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/alaska-job-losses-continue-as-recession-enters-third-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Alaska job losses continue as recession enters third year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Alaska&rsquo;s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate dropped a statistically insignificant 0.1 percent between April and May, according to <a href=\"http:\/\/labor.alaska.gov\/news\/2018\/news18-28.htm\" target=\"_blank\">preliminary figures from the Alaska Department of Labor<\/a>, and job losses are continuing as a statewide recession enters its third year.<\/p>\n<p>Alaska&rsquo;s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 7.2 percent in May, a slight improvement from 7.3 percent. The comparable national rate is 3.8 percent, the lowest it has been since the late 1960s.<\/p>\n<p>Karinne Wiebold, an economist with the Department of Labor (which produces the monthly unemployment report), said the decline &ldquo;is not statistically significant and is preliminary, so it may be revised.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Alaska employment is heavily seasonal, with peaks in the summer and dips in the winter. The seasonally adjusted rate <a href=\"http:\/\/live.laborstats.alaska.gov\/labforce\/seasonal.cfm\" target=\"_blank\">smoothes those swings<\/a> to reveal actual trends.<\/p>\n<p>Wiebold said a better indicator of Alaska&rsquo;s economy are the number of jobs in the state.<\/p>\n<p>According to the new figures, <a href=\"http:\/\/labor.alaska.gov\/news\/2018\/news18-28_data.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">333,300 people were employed in Alaska in May 2018<\/a>. That&rsquo;s down 2,000 jobs from May 2017 and 11,800 from May 2015, the pre-recession peak.<\/p>\n<p>Southeast Alaska is down about 400 jobs from a year ago, Wiebold said.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><b>&#8226; Contact reporter James Brooks at jbrooks@juneauempire.com or 523-2258.<\/b><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alaska&rsquo;s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate dropped a statistically insignificant 0.1 percent between April and May, according to <a href=\"http:\/\/labor.alaska.gov\/news\/2018\/news18-28.htm\" target=\"_blank\">preliminary figures from the Alaska Department of Labor<\/a>, and job losses are continuing as a statewide recession enters its third year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":273,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230,41],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news","tag-unemployment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272","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\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}