In a presentation on the outlook for Alaska's economy in 2022, Dr. Mouhcine Guettabi provided an employment-centric forecast of the likely path the economy will take, given available information. He outlined both pandemic and pre-pandemic factors that have impacted the state, discussed whether Alaska's situation is unique from the rest of the U.S., and offered his thoughts on its continued recovery. Guettabi's formal written analysis will be available on ISER's website in the near future.
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In 2019, the Alaska economy emerged from a 3-year recession after losing more than 11,000 jobs between 2015 and 2018. The recovery has, however, been modest as employment averaged 0.4% or 1,400 more jobs between January and November 2019 relative to the same period last year. Oil & Gas and Construction have led this growth as they averaged 510 and 720 more jobs, respectively. It is also important to note that the recovery has been uneven. While we only have borough level data until the month of June, figure 1 shows that a considerable number of boroughs/census areas were still losing jobs as of June 2019.
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In this brief, we summarize the state’s unrestricted general fund revenues, agency operations spending, and capital budget spending between fiscal years 1975 and 2021. The severe decline in oil prices in 2015 resulted in a significant revenue decline which has then resulted in spending reductions at both the agency operation level and the capital budget. For fiscal year 2021, capital spending per person will be the third lowest since 1975 and Agency Operations will be the sixth lowest in real dollars.
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Alaska's economy is in recovery mode, but how much optimism is warranted this year? Join ISER on January 26 from 12-1 pm for an online presentation with insights from economist Mouhcine Guettabi. He will give an overview of how the economy has changed since the onset of the pandemic and a look at the opportunities and challenges for Alaska in 2022.
About Dr. Mouhcine Guettabi
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Director of the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) and Professor of Economics, Dr. Ralph Townsend, will participate in an upcoming debate with ISER’s former director and Professor Emeritus of Economics, Dr. Gunnar Knapp. Moderated by another former director of ISER and Professor Emeritus of Economics, Dr. Scott Goldsmith, the discussion will focus on whether the Permanent Fund Dividend should be constitutionally structured as an endowment and what that would mean to Alaska’s finances and dividend program going forward.
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The Institute of Social and Economic Research’s (ISER) Dr. Mouhcine Guettabi, Associate Professor of Economics, was recently published in Scientific American where he discussed his recent research and results on the impact of universal basic income (UBI) on childhood obesity. The article drew from a longer report which Dr. Guettabi co-authored with Drs. Brett Watson and Matthew Reimer.
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ISER's Mouhcine Guettabi gave a presentation on the economic impacts of Governor Dunleavy's veto of $409M from the state budget at the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce's "Make it Monday," telling the audience that employment losses from cuts will exceed any gains that have been realized during Alaska's fragile economic recovery of the last few months.
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For the last 37 years, Alaska residents have received a Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD), but it is only recently that researchers have begun to analyze the effect of the PFD on the socio-economic well-being of Alaskans. In a new paper, Mouhcine Guettabi, associate professor of economics and ISER faculty, summarizes the research, including his own, on what is known of the PFD’s effect on employment, consumption, income inequality, health, and crime.
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There are positive signs that the recession is coming to an end, with a slight growth in jobs during January and February 2019, but the recovery is fragile and will be sensitive to changes in oil prices and budget cuts, Mouhcine Guettabi, associate professor of Economics and ISER faculty told attendees at a series of Alaska Economic Summits sponsored by Northrim Bank in April.
Overall, employment increased by 400 jobs between February 2018 and February 2019. This is in comparison to losses of more than 12,500 jobs since 2016.
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An increase of $1,000 in the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) affects women in the labor market differently than men, with women working fewer hours and men having increased employment opportunities in the three months after the PFD is distributed. The differing responses, however, nearly balance each other out with a relatively small decline in the number of hours worked on an annual basis, according to a new paper by ISER’s Andrew Bibler, Mouhcine Guettabi, and Matthew Reimer.