Southcentral: Alaska's most populous region: still booming, still building.

• Author: Barbour, Tracy
• Position: REGIONAL REVIEW

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Southcentral Alaska encompasses a significant portion of the state, with the majority of the state's population occupying the region--most residing in the Anchorage area.

People often equate Southcentral with the Anchorage, Matanuska-Susitna and the Kenai Peninsula boroughs. But in a broader sense, the region encompasses the shorelines and uplands of the Gulf of Alaska, including the Alaska Peninsula, Kodiak Island, Cook Inlet, and Prince William Sound. Major cities in the Southcentral region, besides Anchorage, are Kenai, Valdez, Homer and Seward.

REGIONAL ECONOMIC TRENDS

Southcentral Alaska represents a mixed economic picture. Fisheries and petroleum production are important economic activities throughout the region, yet each city bears a certain brand of economic distinction, according to Neal Fried, an economist with the Alaska Department of Labor.

Anchorage and Mat-Su, for instance, are regionally one economy, Fried says. Located about an hour apart, one area influences the other. Anchorage has the largest and most diverse economy in the region. "Anchorage's growth has influence over Mat-Su, as so many of those residents work in Mat-Su," he says.

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Kodiak relies heavily on the fishing industry and a large U.S. Coast Guard station. Valdez has a mixed economy tied to petroleum, fishing, tourism and public dollars. Kenai has its own indigenous oil industry. A lot of the people who live there work on the North Slope, which has a major impact on Kenai and the entire state.

Oil is Alaska's most dynamic and fastest-growing industry. As with most places, consumers in Alaska are feeling the pain of higher oil prices and energy costs, but they're also benefiting, because the higher costs for oil translate into more revenues for the State. "These high energy prices are not good for Americans, but they are good for the State of Alaska," Fried says.

Unemployment in Southcentral Alaska varies throughout the region and can be quite seasonal. "Kodiak has the most interesting volatility when it comes to unemployment," he says. "That's because of their year-round fisheries."

Kodiak typically has low employment during the winter and high employment in the summer and fall. "Unemployment goes the way of the fishing industries," Fried says. For example, unemployment for Kodiak was 5.5 percent this April, then jumped to 9.8 percent in May. It will drop again as the salmon fisheries get under way."

In the Prince William Sound/Valdez area, the unemployment rate also vacillates. Unemployment moved from 10.3 percent in April to 8 percent in May.

ECONOMY OF THE ANCHORAGE AREA

The Municipality of Anchorage is home to about 282,000 of Alaska's 644,000...