Anchorage Daily News

Alaska's unemployment rate jumped to 7.4 percent in October, up from 6.7 percent a month earlier, the state Department of Labor said today.

The seasonally adjusted rate for last month compares to 6.2 percent in October of last year, and it compares to a national jobless rate of 6.5 percent last month.

The Labor Department estimates 23,800 Alaska workers were without jobs but looking, compared with 21,900 in September.

"The rate increase raises questions about the state's economic health, but the picture is muddied by two other economic indicators that suggest a continuing trend of slow but consistent growth," the department said.

Unemployment insurance claims grew in October, as usual, but not as much as would be suggested by the jump in the jobless rate, the department said. Not all unemployed workers qualify for or file for unemployment benefits, however.

The other growth indicator is the number of people working for employers, as opposed to being self-employed. If this number is growing, it's considered a strong indicator that the economy is growing.

Led by the oil industry, Alaska employers last month had about 2,100 more workers on payroll than they did a year earlier, a 0.7 percent growth. That growth rate has held roughly steady for months.

In Anchorage, where employers had added 1,400 payroll jobs in the past year, the growth rate was an even stronger 0.9 percent in October.

The unemployment rate in Anchorage last month was 5.9 percent, not seasonally adjusted, up from 5.7 percent in September and from 4.8 percent in October 2007. The state's largest city had an estimated 11,600 jobless workers last month, up from 9,200 a year earlier.

The Labor Department said it needs to watch the jobless rate for several more months before drawing conclusions about whether the rate is trending upward, "especially to the degree October's preliminary rate suggests."

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