Anchorage Daily News

A new study says missile defense operations in Alaska last year had an economic impact of $246 million.

That impact includes wages and benefits for workers in direct and indirect jobs, contracted services and taxes, according to the study by economist Hans Geier of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He did the study for Boeing Co., which is the prime contractor for designing, producing, testing and sustaining the missile defense components.

The missile defense operations are mainly located at Fort Greely near Delta and on the Aleutians, and the economic impacts are felt mainly there as well as in Fairbanks and Anchorage, the study concluded.

Among the details of the impacts in 2007 are:

• A payroll of $51.7 million, including benefits, for 323 Alaska workers -- 250 with Boeing and 73 with subcontractors. The average pay was about $100,000 a year.

• Another $100 million in purchases and expenditures. Spending with Native-owned businesses for goods and services totaled $31.9 million.

• All this spending circulating in the economy also supported jobs. Geier pegged this number at 716 jobs.

• Boeing paid $9.6 million in state and local taxes, primarily income tax, property tax, sales tax and motor-vehicle licenses.

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