Anyone who wants to get a pizza midweek at the Marine Bar or a steak or burger at the Elks Lodge knows that worker shortages have forced employers to reduce their days and cut back on offerings.
“This worker shortage is real, and it’s not going away anytime soon,” Dan Robinson, research chief at the Alaska Department of Labor, told legislators last month.
“For nine years in a row, more people have left the state than have come here,” he told the Senate Finance Committee.
The population has been stable as births have outpaced deaths, but the years of net migration loss of several thousand people a year since 2012 has cut into the labor pool.
“Is Alaska desirable, compared to the other states? We’re not doing terribly well by that measure,” Robinson said at the April 13 committee hearing.
“Alaska is no longer the premier state in the nation for wages,” said Fairbanks Sen. Click Bishop, co-chair of the Finance Committee and a former Labor Department commissioner. “Our wages have not kept up here.”
Whereas Alaska led the nation in median wage in the late 1970s, after the oil pipeline boom, the state now ranks around No. 10, depending on the survey.
Anchorage Sen. Bill Wielechowski asked Robinson what jobs are most in need of new hires in Alaska, in particular as policy makers consider education and job training programs. “All of them,” the labor economist answered. “Someone who’s really good at almost anything can make good money.”
The worker shortage in Wrangell shows up every week with Facebook postings and other help wanted ads and signs around town. The chamber of commerce is trying to act as a clearinghouse to help publicize job vacancies — Wrangell has no state jobs service office.
The school district’s chronic shortage of substitute teachers and aides has gotten worse, prompting the schools superintendent to issue a community plea for applicants last month.
And last week two food service operations announced service cutbacks due to lack of staff. The Elks Club on April 26 posted: “Friday and Saturday meals will be suspended at the Elks until we can hire enough staff.”
A day earlier, the Marine Bar and Hungry Beaver Pizza posted it would be closed on Wednesdays and Thursdays until further notice “until we can find help.”
It takes seven people to fully staff the bar and restaurant, said owner Patty Kautz. The last time she had that many workers was three years ago, pre-pandemic, she said last week. “I was a full-time pizza cook all last year,” before she decided it was too much and retired from kitchen work.
The business last week was trying to manage with three employees, Kautz said.
“It’s unbelievable,” she said of the lack of job applicants. “We can’t figure out what people are doing to pay the rent and mortgage.”
Part of the problem, she believes, is that younger people are not staying in town after school.
Lack of housing often is cited as a problem in attracting new residents, and workers, to Wrangell. And the housing shortage, particularly affordable housing, is not limited to Wrangell. Housing is especially tight in coastal communities, making it hard on employers looking to bring in new hires, said Sitka Sen. Bert Stedman, a co-chair of the Finance Committee.
The housing shortage, and its barrier to new hires, extends from “Dutch Harbor (in the Aleutian Islands) to Dixon Entrance (south of Ketchikan),” Stedman said at the April 13 hearing.
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