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Labor force in Southwest Economic Region
19,319
as of July 2026 · monthly · not seasonally adjusted
▲ 6.0% vs prior · ▼ 0.6% vs a year earlier
Series labor_force.southwest_economic_region.nsa
History since 1990
Range
Show
Recent values
| Date | Labor force |
|---|---|
| 2026-07-01 | 19,319 |
| 2026-06-01 | 18,229 |
| 2026-05-01 | 15,236 |
| 2026-04-01 | 17,747 |
| 2026-03-01 | 19,028 |
| 2026-02-01 | 19,386 |
| 2026-01-01 | 18,090 |
| 2025-12-01 | 15,345 |
| 2025-11-01 | 16,034 |
| 2025-09-01 | 17,881 |
| 2025-08-01 | 18,352 |
| 2025-07-01 | 19,438 |
| 2025-06-01 | 18,296 |
| 2025-05-01 | 15,283 |
| 2025-04-01 | 17,457 |
| 2025-03-01 | 18,595 |
| 2025-02-01 | 19,061 |
| 2025-01-01 | 17,547 |
| 2024-12-01 | 14,742 |
| 2024-11-01 | 15,377 |
| 2024-10-01 | 16,600 |
| 2024-09-01 | 17,831 |
| 2024-08-01 | 18,344 |
| 2024-07-01 | 20,151 |
Related series
- Unemployment rateThe four labour-force series for a place are one survey and move together: the rate is unemployment divided by the labour force, and a falling rate can mean more people working or fewer people looking. Read them as a set.
- Unemployment
- Employment
Labor force elsewhere
- Alaska
- Anchorage Mat-Su Economic Region
- Anchorage Mat-Su MSA
- Fairbanks MSA
- Gulf Coast Economic Region
- Interior Economic Region
- Northern Economic Region
- Southeast Economic Region
More about Southwest Economic Region
About this data
Monthly count of Alaskans working, looking for work, and the unemployment rate — the headline "how's the economy" number. Statewide (SA and NSA) plus every borough/census area, two MSAs (Anchorage, Fairbanks), and six economic regions. This is the state's mirror of the federal LAUS program, published as one cumulative CSV.
Known issues & gotchas
Verified file layout (2026-08-06, ~16.4k rows, 1.18 MB):
- Line 1 is a title row (
"Alaska NOT SEASONALLY adjusted",) — skip it; header is line 2:Area Name, Area Type, Area Code, Year, month, period, Preliminary if value is 1, Labor Force, Employment, Unemployment, Unemployment Rate. - Everything is NSA. No SA companion CSV exists at guessed URLs (404). SA statewide comes from FRED/BLS (
AKUR) viafred_ak_indicators. - Area types:
01statewide,02MSA (Anchorage/Mat-Su, Fairbanks),04borough/census area (30),60economic region (6) = 39 geographies. - Annual-average rows are interleaved with
period == "00"— filter them out for monthly series. - Publication gaps have two encodings: all-zero rows (regions) and all-blank rows (boroughs) — observed for Oct 2025 (federal shutdown month when LAUS wasn't produced). Drop rows with null or zero Labor Force.
- Rates print with leading-dot decimals (
.1) — numeric parse handles it, but don't string-match. - The CSV is cumulative (full history each download) — each fetch replaces everything; diffs against the prior snapshot reveal revisions.
- Alaska's rural unemployment rates run far above the statewid