For the last seven years, the Alaska economy has performed “at or near the bottom” nationally in four key measures of economic health, according to a report released Thursday by the University of Alaska Center for Economic Development.
Taken together, the state’s poor performance between 2015 and 2021 — in employment growth, unemployment, net migration and gross domestic product — place Alaska’s economic health at the bottom of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, said Nolan Klouda, the center’s executive director and lead author of the 10-page report.
“You could make a case that Alaska is the bottom-performing state going back to 2015,” Klouda said in an interview Thursday. “I think it is.”
The report concludes, “by all measures presented here … Alaska’s economy appears stuck in a rut relative to the rest of the U.S.”
“This underperformance…
