A new labor forecast from the Anchorage Economic Development Corp. predicts that the job market in Alaska's largest city will grow again in 2007, with employment rising everywhere from health care to the oil patch.
The Anchorage area can expect to see 2,500 new jobs added to the economy in 2007, an increase of 1.7 percent over 2006, Bob Poe, outgoing president of the AEDC, predicted at a luncheon Jan. 31 at the Egan Civic and Center. Job growth will be most significant in the oil, health care, and professional and business services sectors, each seeing 400 new jobs.
The key role of AEDC has been in creating a positive environment for economic growth, Poe said.
The leisure and hospitality sector and the retail sector are expected to add 300 jobs, and government and air transportation 150 jobs, he said. The forecast does not include uniformed military personnel or self-employed workers. According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, there were about 35,826 self-employed people in the Anchorage economy in 2004, the most recent year for which data was available.
A contributing factor to the economic growth is the increased population, which rose by about 22,530 people between 2000 and 2006, according to the economic forecast report prepared for AEDC by the McDowell Group, a Juneau-based economics firm.
Health care, which state labor economist Neal Fried called the “hands-down, most dynamic industry in Anchorage over the last decade,” showed a 2 percent growth in employment in 2006, and similar growth is expected in 2007. That continued growth is tied to increased federal spending, increased health care needs of the aging population and an overall increase in population in Alaska. Advances in health care technology are also requiring more specialized personnel to provide new services, including a new long-term acute care hospital and cancer center that opened recently.
The oil industry is expected to add another 400 jobs in 2007, but then flatten out in 2008, Poe said. This year's growth includes expectations that BP Exploration (Alaska) will hire 300 new workers in development activities and to support continued rebuilding of North Slope pipelines affected by corrosion. ConocoPhillips is continuing development of a number of satellite fields, and Pioneer Natural Resources' Oooguruk development project will add more than 500 workers to its North Slope construction work force in 2007, many of whom will reside in Anchorage, Poe said.
Fried noted in a report released in November, that BP plans to spend $500 million over the next several years to replace 16 miles of pipe at Prudhoe Bay and to upgrade its facilities. “The growing list of independents and other new players, however, may become an ever larger factor in this upswing in activity,” Fried wrote in a forecast in the January issue of Alaska Economic Trends, a publication of the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development.
Leisure and hospitality, including accommodations, food services and establishments for drinking, arts and entertainment, are expected to add another 300 jobs in 2007, for a total work force of 15,700 people. Several new restaurants are scheduled to open in Anchorage, plus a new Embassy Suites hotel in Midtown. Construction of at least one and possibly two other hotels is expected to begin in the next two years, Poe said.
Meanwhile the cruise industry is expected to bring 990,000 passengers to Alaska in 2007, with about one-third of them moving through the Anchorage area. Overall hotel reservations and other bookings for the summer of 2006 were strong, and advance reservations are higher for 2007, he said. Convention activity was also expected to increase in 2007. As Fried noted in his Alaska Economic Trends report, the ingredients are there for another good visitor season: relatively healthy national and international economies, a weak dollar, a projected small increase in cruise ship passengers and an ever-expanding inventory of available hotel rooms.
The retail trade sector will produce about 300 new jobs, with completion of a new Glenn Square retail development in Mountain View by the end of 2007, plus construction of a second $100 million-plus shopping center beginning on the east side of town in 2007. Plans are also underway for a new Super Wal-Mart this spring.
No significant growth is expected in the construction industry in 2007, yet expectations are that construction activity will remain strong through 2007 and likely 2008, Fried said.
In addition to retail construction, there are projects at the Port of Anchorage, the new Anchorage convention center and expansion of the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, plus projects at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, low-income housing to be built by Cook Inlet Housing Authority and a 120-room dormitory at Elmendorf Air Force Base.
While federal employment is expected to decrease again in 2007, AEDC projects that state government will add another 150 jobs in 2007. Few changes are anticipated in the municipal work force. The transportation sector is expected to add 200 jobs in 2007, mostly related to air transportation.
Margaret Bauman can be reached at margie.bauman@alaskajournal.com.
