Research & Reports

Anchorage Employment Report: August 2022

Preliminary job estimates imply that Anchorage’s August job market is rebounding strongly from pandemic- related job losses that have plagued the economy since March of 2020, surpassing AEDC’s previous projections. Preliminary job numbers for August show that Anchorage is the closest it’s been to full job recovery from the pandemic on a monthly basis.

In August, Anchorage had an estimated 150,400 jobs, which is only 600 jobs less than actual jobs in August of 2019. If this trend continues, Anchorage may see full pandemic recovery with monthly jobs surpassing 2019 numbers by September. While this data is encouraging, it’s important to note that 2022’s annual job estimates are still trailing 2019’s actual job counts by an average of 3.4%, or about 5,000 jobs per month. Additionally, Anchorage’s labor market is extremely tight with unemployment at a record low of 2.9% meaning that the lack of available workers will be the largest barrier to full pandemic recovery.

Anchorage and Mat-Su’s largest employers continue to be government entities, like the Anchorage Municipality and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, health care providers, like Providence and the Southcentral Foundation, and the Anchorage School District. The most sought-after professions are registered nurses, retails sales persons (including front-line workers and their supervisors), stockers and order fillers, and human and social services assistants.The Anchorage housing market continues to have an extremely low inventory of single- family homes with homes being quickly purchased by buyers, but one point of relief for home buyers is that the average sales prices of single-family homes have been decreasing for the last three months since their peak of $491,476 in May. The change in sales price is mostly a result of the Federal Reserve’s attempts to curb national inflation by steadily increasing interest rates since March of 2022, which have pushed home mortgage rates solidly above 5% in most cases.