This is not a boom: Economist Neal Fried talks about Mat-Su

WASILLA -- People might imagine a report from an economist to be on the dry side when it comes to entertainment, but a presentation last week by Alaska Department of Labor economist Neal Fried at the Greater Wasilla Chamber of Commerce luncheon shattered that stereotype.

In some ways Fried's presentation was about shattering stereotypes, some of which have lingered since the days of the pipeline construction boom when a pizza under $20 was touted as a bargain.

Alaskans don't make more money than other Americans, the cost of living in Alaska -- at least on the road system -- isn't higher either, and the male to female ratio is a lot closer to the rest of the country than many people think. The 2000 census recorded 107 men for every 100 women in Alaska -- 108 in the Mat-Su area. Nationwide there are 96 men for every 100 women, census figures show. Fried likes the demographic data as much as the purely economic data. He is looking forward to more census numbers.

"A lot of the really juicy stuff hasn't come out yet," he said. Fried is talking about census data that will peg specific areas such as Meadow Lakes and Sutton.

"The differences between 1990 and 2000 in most cases will be very dramatic," Fried said.

Last week's presentation was called the "2002 Economic Outlook," in a chamber press release. Fried told the audience of local business people that he doesn't make predictions. "It's much more meaningful for you to do your own forecasting."

Fried presented a look at the recent past for Mat-Su and Alaska and showed charts that gave snapshots of where the Valley stands now. The presentation was unabashedly positive, its title: "The Valley's Economy Is Still in High Gear, while most of Alaska is Grinding Them."

Labor department statistics show that the state and the Valley have been adding jobs steadily for 13 years. There are places in the state where job growth is weak or nonexistent -- such as in Southeast logging communities -- but the Valley isn't one of them.

"This isn't the first time [Mat-Su has] has grown fast, but this is one of the only times that you're growing faster than the rest of the state," Fried said in a later interview. "The tenor really varies around the state."

In the Valley two trends stand out. One is the population growth and the other is a growth in the number of service sector jobs, from 15 percent of Mat-Su jobs in 1970 to 24 percent today. That's not uncommon throughout the country, according to Fried.

"There's a lot of that going on and every place has a lot of employment that is based on servicing its own population," Fried said.

The Valley's economy is also becoming more and more a part of a regional economy that includes Anchorage. One of Fried's more creative sources of data is a transportation department vehicle counter that was placed along the Glenn Highway and counted cars between Mat-Su and Eagle River. The counter was showing a steady climb in vehicles per day when it was taken away by transportation officials in 2000, abruptly cutting off the data stream.

"There's a lot of [vehicle counters] in different places, but this one I really liked because it was beyond Eagle River and it wasn't picking up all of that noise," Fried said.

The current building boom that seems to be taking place around the Valley might have people looking over their shoulder at the mid-1980s crash, when new homes and commercial space were constructed and sat empty. Fried said this time around things are different.

"We're not booming. People think we are, but we aren't. It's not nearly as dramatic -- it's much more muted because the economy is bigger and it's not growing as fast," Fried said. "We haven't been in that speculative fever that we were in then. It's very hard to reconstruct that time, because we were growing fast and we even got ahead of that growth."