Research & Reports

Anchorage Employment Report: November 2022

Anchorage continues to inch towards a full recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Preliminary jobs numbers for November 2022 show 144,900 jobs in Anchorage, an increase of 3,000 over November 2021, down slightly from October’s year-over-year improvement, which showed a 3,500 job increase over 2021.

Though Anchorage’s rate of recovery may have slowed slightly compared to 2021, it continues to gain ground relative to pre-pandemic job numbers. November 2022 numbers have closed within 4,800 jobs of November 2019 while October 2022 trailed October 2019 by 5,300 jobs.

Pandemic-driven job losses are not the only jobs Anchorage is currently trying to recover, however. Each year be- tween 2012-2015, Anchorage averaged more than 155,000 jobs, whereas prior to 2020 you would have to go all the way back to 2007 to find a year when Anchorage had an annual average of fewer than 150,000 jobs.

A quick summary of progress recovering from the pandemic and recession which preceded it, looking at annual average job counts:

• Anchorage peaked at over 155k jobs (2012-2015 averaged 155k-157.2k jobs) • By 2019, Anchorage had lost 5k+ jobs (2019 = 150k jobs)
• The pandemic knocked out another 12k jobs (2020 = 138k jobs)
• 2021 recovered about 2.5k jobs (up to 140.5k jobs)
• 2022 has recovered roughly 4.5k jobs (up to 144.9k jobs)
• In 2022, Anchorage is more than 5k jobs below the lowest jobs years of 2007-2019 • In 2022, Anchorage is more than 10k jobs below the lowest jobs years of 2012-2015

Despite a strong year in 2022 for the Anchorage economy on many fronts, as the rest of this report will show, there are reasons to be concerned about Anchorage’s ability to continue this positive trajectory of jobs recovery due to a maximized existing labor force and an incredibly tight real estate market making it difficult and expensive for any new entrants to the workforce to find or afford housing.