Faculty member Diane Hirshberg was interviewed by the High North News about challenges facing educators and students across the Circumpolar North as schools and universities are asked to move their teaching online.
News at ISER
Welcome to the ISER News and Announcements page, your hub for timely updates, industry insights, and the latest organizational highlights. Here, you can stay informed about upcoming events, important deadlines, and exciting achievements, all aimed at keeping the ISER community connected and engaged.
Read More
The Institute of Social and Economic Research’s (ISER) Dr. Jen Schmidt, alongside co-author Dr. Erin Whitney (Alaska Center for Energy and Power), have an article featured in the recent edition of the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States’ (ARCUS) Witness Community Highlights. The article, “MicroFEWs": Exploring the Impacts of Local Renewable Energy Projects on Remote Arctic Community Security and Resilience, summarized the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded MicroFEWs project which “aims to explore the impact of local and renewable energy projects on FEW security and resilience in the remote Arctic communities,” as, “little research has been done to understand the linkage of Food/Energy/Water (FEW) systems in remote Arctic systems.”
Read More
A new paper by ISER faculty, Professors Matt Berman, Bob Loeffler, and Jennifer Schmidt, describes some of the long-term effects of the Red Dog Mine on local workers and communities. The researchers used a unique data set to follow workers at the Red Dog Mine from local villages for 14 years. The research focused on these questions: what percentage of the mine workers live within the region, and what percentage of the total payroll do local workers receive?
Read More
The Institute of Social and Economic Research’s (ISER) Dr. Kevin Berry recently co-wrote an article with Dr. Katherine Lee (University of Idaho) published in The Hill. The piece, Why a go-it-alone approach to combatting the coronavirus won't work, addresses the current coronavirus outbreak (COVID-19) and why we need coordinated international efforts in order to minimize the overall effects.
Read More
The Institute of Social and Economic Research’s (ISER) Dr. Dayna DeFeo alongside ISER researcher, Trang Tran, and Associate Vice Provost for Workforce Development at the University of Alaska (UA) Statewide, Teri Cothren, presented at the 6th Annual AlaskaCAN! Conference in Anchorage last week.
Read More
The Institute of Social and Economic Research’s Professor Kevin Berry recently discussed the coronavirus with both Alaska Public Media and KTUU. He says the oil, fishing, tourism and cargo industries may be especially susceptible to the effects of the outbreak.
“These things will probably slow down the economy because, within China, people are being told to stay inside, not move around,” Berry commented. “So we can expect the economy as a whole to slow down because of this. There’s going to be an impact on things like oil.”
Read More
Drs. Katie Cueva and Jen Schmidt of the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) traveled to Northwest Arctic Alaska to discuss cancer education for high school students. Cancer is the leading cause of death in the state, and Alaska Native people bear a disproportionate burden of mortality and cancer risk factors. Working with communities to understand and prevent cancer can help lower the unnecessary loss of life from this disease.
Read More
In a presentation on the outlook for Alaska's economy in 2022, Dr. Mouhcine Guettabi provided an employment-centric forecast of the likely path the economy will take, given available information. He outlined both pandemic and pre-pandemic factors that have impacted the state, discussed whether Alaska's situation is unique from the rest of the U.S., and offered his thoughts on its continued recovery. Guettabi's formal written analysis will be available on ISER's website in the near future.
Read More
In 2019, the Alaska economy emerged from a 3-year recession after losing more than 11,000 jobs between 2015 and 2018. The recovery has, however, been modest as employment averaged 0.4% or 1,400 more jobs between January and November 2019 relative to the same period last year. Oil & Gas and Construction have led this growth as they averaged 510 and 720 more jobs, respectively. It is also important to note that the recovery has been uneven. While we only have borough level data until the month of June, figure 1 shows that a considerable number of boroughs/census areas were still losing jobs as of June 2019.
Read More
In this brief, we summarize the state’s unrestricted general fund revenues, agency operations spending, and capital budget spending between fiscal years 1975 and 2021. The severe decline in oil prices in 2015 resulted in a significant revenue decline which has then resulted in spending reductions at both the agency operation level and the capital budget. For fiscal year 2021, capital spending per person will be the third lowest since 1975 and Agency Operations will be the sixth lowest in real dollars.