The following is a written summary of Senator Myers’ special order from 3/6/23:
A couple of weeks ago, a group from one of the trade unions dropped by my office. We got to talking about the IIJA money and capital budgets in general and how they interact their training programs. They told me that they are very concerned that they would send a bunch of people through their internship programs over the next couple of years only to have them leave the state once the federal money dries up. They don’t want to spend their time and money educating someone else’s workforce.
I’m worried that the rest of the state is going to be doing the same thing. We’re talking a lot about getting a quality education, and that’s valuable. But if that’s all we’re talking about, that’s putting the cart before the horse. If we have no jobs available, our kids will still leave, either after high school or college.
There has been a lot of talk about the people leaving the state over the last decade or so. It’s particularly acute because we know which demographic is leaving. It’s largely people in their 30s and 40s. the group in their prime working years and most likely to stat a business, buy a house, start a family, and otherwise provide the foundation we need for the long-term functioning of the state. Even people in their 20s, who have traditionally been a backbone for in migration, are barely coming here.
Why are people leaving? In short, people who are most likely to work at building a future are the people not seeing a future here. If they don’t see a future here, why would our young people see a future here, even if they get a good education?
So what do we need to do to make sure our young people have a future here? Alaska has been at or near the bottom of the list for our business climate for nearly a decade now. That has to change. First and foremost, we will get a more stable business climate if we focus on getting a stable, long-term fiscal plan. That has to be at the forefront. Do we want to be educating our kids for an economy that doesn’t exist?
Unlike a workforce, a lack of a stable fiscal structure isn’t something that businesses can import. Why would any person or business want to invest here and provide the jobs that our residents need to plan for the future if they never know if the state will be coming after them the next time our revenue drops? Or the next time we decide that there is some other service we can’t live without? By focusing on education and assuming that it will fix our economy, we’re putting the cart before the horse.
Two years ago, Professor Mouhcine Guettabi of ISER told us that Alaska was losing somewhere in the neighborhood of a half a billion dollars of private investment every year that we don’t solve this problem. Fixing that problem has to be the first goal. If we don’t and focus on education instead, we’re going to be doing exactly what that construction union was worried about: we will be using our resources to educate somebody else’s workforce.
