quote:

Originally posted by AKSuperDually:

Thousands of people are fleeing Alaska right now.

Please forgive the minor thread drift but this caught my eye. I was not aware of this. What's going on in Alaska that is causing thousand to leave?

quote:

Originally posted by Fed161:

quote:

Originally posted by AKSuperDually:

Thousands of people are fleeing Alaska right now.

Please forgive the minor thread drift but this caught my eye. I was not aware of this. What's going on in Alaska that is causing thousand to leave?

Not sure about thousands leaving but our state's economy sucks right now. There is some regular migration out of the state that happens every time this year with seasonal employment. On top of that, our 3 major industries our tourism, oil and fishing are all in the toilet.

This year's tourist season was a disaster, all cruises were cancelled. On top of cruises being cancelled there were additional travel restrictions and quarantines on those entering the state. Then Canada effectively closed the border.

Oil prices are down, New exploration has slowed as well as production. That means less jobs and less revenue to the state. Concerns for Covid also slowed production and limited the workers travel to the north slope.

Fishing has also been affected. A lot of the workers come from Asia for the season and their travel has been affected.

Couple all of this with the mayor of Anchorage being a petty little tyrant and shutting down a lot of businesses through executive orders and it's been a real economic shit show for the state. This summer has been both a blessing and a curse. There's been no traffic to get out and see Alaska, the problem is a lot of destinations have very little to offer with businesses closing down.

I know for a fact, that in the late 60's, early 70's time frame, a few air force blokes drove a NUCLEAR WARHEAD over the unmarked North Dakota border into Canada and got lost. A Canadian mountie just happened along, pulled the truck over, and demanded to inspect the cargo being carried by a bunch of US soldiers, in Canada.

The Mountie had 5 M16's pointed at him, told to get on the ground, that he was NOT inspecting any cargo, oh, and please give us directions back to America.

The time when US soldiers invaded Canada with a nuclear warhead and almost caused an international incident, that you never heard of...

^^^^

I had a land tour of Alaska planned for this past August. It was pending for a while, with restrictions by Alaska: a COVID test (negative) within 72 hours of travel, a second test upon arrival with quarantine until final (meaning a need to come 2 days early to insure not missing the tour start date). The tour company finally just cancelled the tour. I'm on the list for the same tour next year.

flashguy

quote:

Originally posted by Fed161:

quote:

Originally posted by AKSuperDually:

Thousands of people are fleeing Alaska right now.

Please forgive the minor thread drift but this caught my eye. I was not aware of this. What's going on in Alaska that is causing thousand to leave?

It's being downplayed by most, so as to not incite panic...but the reality is that school enrollments are drastically down. An example being the Kenai Peninsula Borough School Disitrict. A full 1/3rd of the students enrolled at the time of the shut down last spring did not return to school this fall. 1/3rd of the students left the district. They didn't move to Anchorage...they left state. The "U-Haul" paradigm often is the best indicator of net migration. The numbers of U-hauls headed out versus into the state. Those statistics are indicating that more people have left Alaska than in any other year those statistics have been monitored. As a trend, we've had mostly vacant housing on the markets for some time. While that still holds true, many of those houses are now either back to the lienholder or mothballed. Fire sales and vacancy rates are high. Expectations are for mass foreclosures this winter. The investors are already gearing up for it. In an unofficial poll of people I know, about 1/5th of the people I know in this state have moved out of state since the Chinese flu outbreak or plan to before winter. Most others are gearing up for some even more difficult years ahead. Paying off debt, piling up stores, and making plans for new taxes and higher expenses.

quote:

Originally posted by flashguy:
I had a land tour of Alaska planned for this past August. It was pending for a while, with restrictions by Alaska: a COVID test (negative) within 72 hours of travel, a second test upon arrival with quarantine until final (meaning a need to come 2 days early to insure not missing the tour start date). The tour company finally just cancelled the tour. I'm on the list for the same tour next year.

flashguy

Chinese Flu has been especially difficult for rural communities where tourists ignored quarantine and travel restrictions and brought the illness in anyway. Seasonal non-resident workers have done the same. We're watching it now with Moose and Caribou hunters. I cannot for the life of me figure out how some nonresident hunters think their trophy hunt is more important than local lives. Remote is the one place where restricting travel makes sense. Places where medical help is largely unavailable.

quote:

Originally posted by 2000Z-71:

quote:

Originally posted by Fed161:

quote:

Originally posted by AKSuperDually:

Thousands of people are fleeing Alaska right now.

Please forgive the minor thread drift but this caught my eye. I was not aware of this. What's going on in Alaska that is causing thousand to leave?

Not sure about thousands leaving but our state's economy sucks right now. There is some regular migration out of the state that happens every time this year with seasonal employment. On top of that, our 3 major industries our tourism, oil and fishing are all in the toilet.

This year's tourist season was a disaster, all cruises were cancelled. On top of cruises being cancelled there were additional travel restrictions and quarantines on those entering the state. Then Canada effectively closed the border.

Oil prices are down, New exploration has slowed as well as production. That means less jobs and less revenue to the state. Concerns for Covid also slowed production and limited the workers travel to the north slope.

Fishing has also been affected. A lot of the workers come from Asia for the season and their travel has been affected.

Couple all of this with the mayor of Anchorage being a petty little tyrant and shutting down a lot of businesses through executive orders and it's been a real economic shit show for the state. This summer has been both a blessing and a curse. There's been no traffic to get out and see Alaska, the problem is a lot of destinations have very little to offer with businesses closing down.

When I lived in Alaska, I used to go to the Anchorage Economic Development Corporation (AEDC) Luncheon. They always had a surprisingly entertaining speaker (e.g. author of freakonomics one year) and it was interesting to see the local and state economics. Oil & gas has a huge direct impact on the economy, but it also has a large indirect impact (i.e. the O&G employees need services such as health care, restaurants, snowplowing, etc). O&G also kept the Anchorage hotels in business year around which is stark contrast to the tourism only areas where they were open May to Sept. The O&G bust began in 2014 as I was moving out of Alaska and COVID has made it much worse.

Here is the link to the 2020 AEDC slide show.

quote:

Originally posted by tatortodd:

quote:

Originally posted by 2000Z-71:

quote:

Originally posted by Fed161:

quote:

Originally posted by AKSuperDually:

Thousands of people are fleeing Alaska right now.

Please forgive the minor thread drift but this caught my eye. I was not aware of this. What's going on in Alaska that is causing thousand to leave?

Not sure about thousands leaving but our state's economy sucks right now. There is some regular migration out of the state that happens every time this year with seasonal employment. On top of that, our 3 major industries our tourism, oil and fishing are all in the toilet.

This year's tourist season was a disaster, all cruises were cancelled. On top of cruises being cancelled there were additional travel restrictions and quarantines on those entering the state. Then Canada effectively closed the border.

Oil prices are down, New exploration has slowed as well as production. That means less jobs and less revenue to the state. Concerns for Covid also slowed production and limited the workers travel to the north slope.

Fishing has also been affected. A lot of the workers come from Asia for the season and their travel has been affected.

Couple all of this with the mayor of Anchorage being a petty little tyrant and shutting down a lot of businesses through executive orders and it's been a real economic shit show for the state. This summer has been both a blessing and a curse. There's been no traffic to get out and see Alaska, the problem is a lot of destinations have very little to offer with businesses closing down.

When I lived in Alaska, I used to go to the Anchorage Economic Development Corporation (AEDC) Luncheon. They always had a surprisingly entertaining speaker (e.g. author of freakonomics one year) and it was interesting to see the local and state economics. Oil & gas has a huge direct impact on the economy, but it also has a large indirect impact (i.e. the O&G employees need services such as health care, restaurants, snowplowing, etc). O&G also kept the Anchorage hotels in business year around which is stark contrast to the tourism only areas where they were open May to Sept. The O&G bust began in 2014 as I was moving out of Alaska and COVID has made it much worse.

Here is the link to the 2020 AEDC slide show.

AEDC is entertaining for certain. So is the speaker you referenced. Niel Freid. A nice guy, but ultimately he has a bachelors degree only, and has worked for the state his entire career. He is a nice guy, but not the most knowledgeable regarding economic trends and forecasts for our state. He basically repeats everything AEDC and other entities say. AEDC does very little of their own research, and most of their conclusions are very politically connected. All their data is OLD.