The rise of the industrial economy in the 70s had the working population in Alaska strive to get a full time job with an employer and show up for work. It has been the norm for decades, but if we study the shift in employment statistics closely, there is a big revolution in the making.
The working population in Alaska is currently witnessing a post-industrial shift into a self dependent economy. Gen Z doesn’t want to fit in the industrial complex and look for flexibility and satisfaction in their job.
How big is the gig economy workforce in Alaska?
29% of the small business workforce in Alaska work as independent workers.
Comparative analysis of gig economy and employment datasets for small businesses suggest a dramatic shift in how working population in Alaska work: 29% of the small business workforce work as independent workers. In Alaska there are 57,896 self employed gig workers ( freelancers and contractors ) compared to 138,517 salaried employees in small business payroll ( firms with less than 500 employees).
The gig economy workforce of self employed independent contractors, freelancers, also identified as non employer firms are becoming an important factor in Alaska. As per the current 2019 NES ( released on June 30, 2022) there are 57,896 gig businesses in Alaska, up from 53,284 in 2010.
This increase in the gig worker population can be safely related to increase in employment opportunities created by the rise of online platforms such as Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, TaskRabbit.
Which industries contribute the most to the gig economy in Alaska?
The sector " Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services " contributed the most whereas the lowest contribution came from Utilities sector.
We aim to look at the distribution of gig economy workforce across broad 17 industry levels as defined under NAICS. As per the current 2019 NES ( released on June 30, 2022), there are 2 sectors with more than 5,000 gig workers. The sector " Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services " contributed the most with the number of gig workers as 7,183. The lowest contributor to the gig economy was the Utilities sector with just 36 gig workers across Alaska. The number of gig "businesses" according to the respective industry sectors is exhibited in the table below.
The next important thing to analyze is change in the gig economy workforce across different industries over the last decade. This analysis will help us determine the true drivers in the rise of gig economy in Alaska. Analysis of the data suggests that the biggest driver in the gig economy across Alaska is the Transportation and Warehousingsector. The number of gig workers increased by 75% from 2,318 in 2010, increasing to 4,046 in the data from the current reference year NES 2019.
For the same time period, the biggest loss of 976 was witnessed in the Other Services (except Public Administration) sector. The overall decline in this sector over the last decade was at 18%, witnessing a decrease to 4,429 ( in 2019 ) from 5,405 ( in 2010).
The change in the number of gig "businesses" according to the respective industry sectors over the data analysis of last 10 reference years in NES is exhibited in the table below.
Which counties contribute the most to the gig economy in Alaska?
The top 5 counties have 77.69% of the entire 57,896 gig workforce
Looking at the county distribution for the gig economy workers across Alaska, the top 5 counties have 77.69% of the entire 57,896 gig workforce.
On the other hand the lowest contributing locations contribute approximately 1.51% of the state level gig workforce with 877 gig workers in total among them.
As expected, the top counties with the most number of gig workers are also the counties with the highest growth percentage of gig workers over the last decade. The best growth achieved is by Anchorage Municipality county, where the number of gig workers increased 10% from being 19,347 in 2016 to 21,235 in 2019 ( the latest reference year for NES as per the release on Jun 30 2022).
Who does gig work and what are the demographic profile of gig economy workers in Alaska?
Across Alaska, the number of male workers in gig economy stood at 31,500 compared to 23,000 female workers
Across Alaska, the gig work runs through every demographic profile criteria. As some of the the gigs such as delivering packages, food, driving passengers have low entry barriers work has a low barrier to start with, a lot of younger and population that is not economically established tend to take up these gigs more than the rest of population.
To get more details, we analyzed the most current Nonemployer Statistics by Demographics. We found that across Alaska, the number of male workers in gig economy stood at 31,500 compared to 23,000 female workers.
The distribution on the basis of ethnicity was stark and the number of non hispanics in the gig workforce stood at 54,000 compared to 2,600 workers with ethnicity as hispanic.
On the basis of race the number of gig workers from the white population was found to be 49,000 compared to the 1,300 from black and 2,700 asian population.