Research & Reports

Anchorage Employment Report: October 2022

Anchorage job growth declined month-over-month to an estimated 146,000 jobs as compared to September’s 147,300. This decrease was expected as it is the traditional seasonal decline that Anchorage experiences when the fall season transitions into winter, hospitality operations slow down, summer construction projects come to a close, and other seasonal economic activity slows down. Notably, Anchorage’s estimated October jobs numbers are 3,700 higher than last year’s numbers, demonstrating that Anchorage is partially recovering from pandemic-related job loss. However, Anchorage is still far behind economic recovery caused by the 2015-2019 recession. In October of 2015, Anchorage had 157,400 jobs, 7.8% more than October of 2022.

Anchorage and Mat-Su’s largest employee-seeking employers continue to be government entities, like the Anchorage Municipality and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, health care providers, like Providence and the South- central Foundation, and education providers like the University of Alaska and the Anchorage School District. The most sought-after employees are registered nurses, retail salespersons (including front-line workers and their supervisors), stockers and order fillers, and human and social services assistants.

Because the availability of affordable housing can be a barrier to recruiting out-of-state candidates, AEDC analyzes the real estate market each month. In October, the Anchorage housing market continued to have an extremely low inventory of single-family homes with homes being quickly purchased by buyers despite continued interest rate increases. In addition to high mortgage rates, buyers are also running into an average price increase on single family homes of 5.7% as compared to September.