The TV show Northern Exposure didnt have enough suicides.

i thought totalsecurity had everything covered up there.

Kidnap some Canadians and force them to work in the spice mines up there?

phatface said:
"i thought totalsecurity had everything covered up there."


The absences of his comments clearly mean that he's working on it.

If I move there, when do I start getting my oil checks?

Well, if they were looking for people in the banking trade i'd go back there in a second

/can't carpenter for live

I'd go if they gave me enough money to build a house and a bunch of land.

I hate people.

On the other hand I'm not skilled at much so I'm not sure if they would want me.

PortWineBoy
If I move there, when do I start getting my oil checks?

Directly after the oil hits the anus!!

Personally I think anyone who lives north of Lake Okeechobee is an idiot.

/lemme check
//yup its 74 and the sun is shining

muzzrphochr: Directly after the oil hits the anus!!


ftw

Don't forget that Alaska also has America's highest male to female ratio. Good luck getting a date, fellers!

PortWineBoy, you live there for a year then you get to sign up, saying you are an Alaska resident and intend to stay. Then you get your Permanent Fund check in the fall after the government figures out how much oil revenue money is available divided into how many applied. You should know that you are automatically registered for the draft at that point if you're a guy and hadn't registered until then. Cost of living is comparable to North Jersey.

FYI, engineering jobs for the north slope and Anchorage are hard to fill, too, for basically the same reasons. Slope jobs have the advantage of allowing you to live in the states without dealing with shoveling snow off your Anchorage roof.

Don't forget that Alaska also has America's highest male to female ratio. Good luck getting a date, fellers!

Unless you have teh gay.

Uh oh! LOGIC FIGHT!

"Today, Alaska is no longer the worker magnet it once was. It has the third highest unemployment in the nation..."

vs

"Alaska faces skilled-worker shortage."

I'm guessing the reason their young skilled workers are leaving the state is because THERE ARE NO JOBS THERE!

ErikZ - Uh oh! LOGIC FIGHT!
"Today, Alaska is no longer the worker magnet it once was. It has the third highest unemployment in the nation..."
vs
"Alaska faces skilled-worker shortage."

I'm guessing the reason their young skilled workers are leaving the state is because THERE ARE NO JOBS THERE!

No logic fight at all. The answer is quite simple and explained within the article.

There's just one problem: Alaska's pay premium has all but disappeared in the past decade.

"We've become closer to average than we used to be," says Neal Fried, a state labor economist. Attractive jobs are plentiful elsewhere. "Look at Seattle. We used to get our workers from there. Now some here go there."

Who would want to live in the frozen (albiet beautiful) wasteland of Alaska with long periods of cold and darkness and a deficit of hittable females when they can live in the lower 48 and have the same prospect for employment and better chances of getting laid?

No "Logic Fight" here my friend.

Espertron:

No "Logic Fight" here my friend.

There can be no shortage if there is no demand (jobs.)

Kyosuke - There can be no shortage if there is no demand (jobs.)

Sounds like there is plenty of demand acc'd to the article. It is just that the pay premium has declined to that of average numbers.

Alaska currently has about 15,000 workers in the construction trade. If building trends remain steady, the state will need an additional 1,000 workers each year simply to replace retirees...

If construction ever starts on a long-desired North Slope natural-gas pipeline, a massive project that would bring natural gas nearly 4,000 miles away to the Midwest, the state might need as many as 9,000 new construction workers.

FTA: "The graying skilled labor force is a national issue, economists say,..."


I've been seeing this trend for the last twenty or so years. It seems young Americans are just not interested in learning construction trades.

I never understood why anyone would want to live in Alaska until I actually went there and saw how absolutely beautiful it is up there.

Can we ship them some of our Illegal Immigrants?

Subby needs a cock-punch. Alaska's beautiful.

I'd love to live in Alaska. Trouble is, wifey thinks it's too cold in Birmingham right now (35 degrees F), so the prospects of her getting through a winter up there are small.

I'd move up there in a minute, from late spring to early fall at least.

If global warming really is happening.. and we can't stop it, seems to me Alaska would be a good place to move to now and buy some wicked nice land...

Let's see:

Cold? Yes
Dark? Yes
Wet? Yes
Able to go days without seeing the sun? Yes

I'd move there in an instant if I could convince my wife. Anything to make the big ball of fire go away!

There is no shortage. The market is just working. Don't want to pay people good money? They'll go elsewhere. Can't afford to pay that much? Then there's overcapacity (or, insuffucient demand if you like) in your industry, and the shiatty companies will fold, until balance is reached. It's called personal responsibility.

What there's a shortage of, is people stupid enough to do a shiatty job for not-enough money, yet still smart enough to do the job.

So did I miss something? Why don't they just start paying more to make it attractive again?

I lived in the middle of rural Alaska for three years, and it isn't that bad, you get used to not seeing the sun, plus on the flipside in the summer you go for just as long without seeing it set. The whole female/male ratio thing would make me hesistate to move back there now as an adult though, unless I was already married.

Make prostitution legal, then subsidize it so that the very best sex workers choose to work there, but can make a lot of money without the customers having to pay a lot. Then make pot legal, and subsidize that. Then watch the skilled worker shortage go away.

"never understood why anyone would want to live in Alaska until I actually went there and saw how absolutely beautiful it is up there."

Did you miss the thousands of acres of shiatty self-built homesteads without siding? Alaska is like Alabama, culture-wise. Except durning tourist season, when it is flooded with wanna be mountain men from the lower 48.

"What there's a shortage of, is people stupid enough to do a shiatty job for not-enough money, yet still smart enough to do the job."

We have that shortage all over the country. I myself am on strike until an employer can come through with the money. Not going to work my ass off and still not be able to be middle class (circa '95).

It's a free country, and it's time people started to realize that if they are careful with their money, they are not forced to take an underpaid job. Only then will the market come back in balance.

That's right, it's a horrible, dark, frozen wasteland, except for 2 months of continuous daylight. But it's hard to see the light because of all the mosquitos and black flies. A gallon of milk, if you can find one, is $10, and a loaf of bread is $8.

Best to stay away.

The dark frozen wasteland does, however, attract wildlife biologists. I'd move up there in a heartbeat, but there are 75 more skilled biologists in line for that one job before me.

Anybody else read "faces" as "feces?" Or should I see a doctor?

ErikZ:
Uh oh! LOGIC FIGHT!

"Today, Alaska is no longer the worker magnet it once was. It has the third highest unemployment in the nation..."

vs

"Alaska faces skilled-worker shortage."

I'm guessing the reason their young skilled workers are leaving the state is because THERE ARE NO JOBS THERE!

No, more like pampered little junior doesn't want to do the kind of work they have available there because he'd rather sit on his ass all day.

In other news, Alaska's bridge building industry is booming, with ice farmers leaving their jobs in droves to join the fledgling industry.

The winters are dreadful. The landscape if horrible. There is nothing to do.



Stay Away!

And on the State level, the State of Alaska's new "benefits package" is a farking joke. Trying to get new skilled state employees is next to impossible now.

And yes, the root problem is that the pay is no longer higher enough to lure outside people here. And that "oil money" amounts to about $1,000.00 a year. Not nearly enough to balance the increased cost of living here.

As far as temps, in Fairbanks it's dry with no wind, not bad at all. I moved from Georgia last year. In fact, I was in GA last week and felt the same there as here, maybe a little colder *there* because of the wind.

Milk is $3 a gallon when not on sale, on sale it's $2. It costs more than that in GA. It's when you go into the bush that it costs more, in towns like Fairbanks costs are the same or lower (also keep in mind we don't have a sales tax).

But what prodigy said, go ahead and just stay away, it's horrible!

Prodigy AK

Not only is there nothing to do, but there is also a declining population. You'll be stuck without the sun, without summer and without any friends.

Definitely stay away.

The male to female ratio only sucks if you're male. =D

I probably would never have made it up here if my enlistment hadn't brought me here. It is sort of its own world.

But hey, if you're afraid of stereotypes and hype, please do stay away. I like being able to have a river to myself in the summer.

totalsecurity: Best to stay away.

Good job.

(whispering: Let's hope none of those Outsiders try to come up here! You get the shotgun, Pa, and I'll get the mace).

"Who would want to live in the frozen (albiet beautiful) wasteland of Alaska with long periods of cold and darkness and a deficit of hittable females when they can live in the lower 48 and have the same prospect for employment and better chances of getting laid?"

Oh, I dunno, maybe all those native unemployeed people?

"3rd highest unemployement" ringing any bells? I quoted it directly in the logic fight post.

It's easy to get skilled workers. Hire them when they're unskilled and have them work their way up.

Unless there's no jobs, then you don't hire anyone, and when the bulk of your force retires, PANIC!

Is computer repair considered skilled work? If so, I'm totally there!

The unemployment numbers are misleading. There are plenty of jobs around Fairbanks and Anchorage, or with the oil companies. Many of those "unemployed" people live in the bush and aren't willing to either move to the "big city" of Fairbanks (40,000 people) or be gone for a week or two at a time doing an oil company rotation. When you've got a community of 200 people, there are only so many jobs around...

My family and I moved up here in September which, supposedly is the worst time of year to move up here. You are getting here just in time for winter. I'm thinking that if this is the worst, I can't wait for summer. ...I mean...

Oh, the agony, the isolation. What were we thinking?!? How are we going to survive up here in the dark with.. um, no running water or electricity!!! And the bears and wolves.. don't forget about the bears and wolves!!! STAY AWAY.

For the love of all that is holy, stay in the lower 48, DO NOT ATTEMPT to save us. We will die miserable and alone so that you may live.

/That should buy us some more time!
//Loving it up here!!

Everything costs more in AK... aside from the weather, the isolation, and the costs... if you are only going to get the same wages as you would get somewhere with a lower cost of living, and a general environment you prefer, well, surprise... you'll go. Anyways, if they need people badly enough, they will pay more. Paying insanely high wages worked fine to get the pipeline built, and it can work for other things too. Aside from that, fark them if the state economy collapses, that should be their punishment for making the rest of the country put up with Ted (bridge to nowhere, internet tubes, anti-neutrality) Stevens.

firefly, look into the history of the internet, you may be surprised by what you find.

I still disagree with "everything costs more in AK." Ooops, I'm supposed to lament the $40 gallons of milk and $30 cartons of eggs. Yeah that's it! $40 a gallon! Gasoline is $55.24 a gallon right now! Oh the humanity! I havn't seen the sun in 4 months!

Could be worse, could be Jersey....

I don't know, personally I'd love to live in Alaska, *especially* in the far north. I guess it just takes a special kind of person..

I live in Alaska, blah blah blah.

Did you know that SOME of Alaska isn't frozen? just very rainy. Sitka for example is a 'temperate rainforest.' Which is another way of saying 'it rains all the time.'

...and I'm telling you there are GOBS of hot chicks up here...most of them native (if you dig the asian chicks, these gals will totally float your boat...quite possibly literally as well as figuratively.)

Wait wait...

It's cold and it sucks and I'm always telling polar bears to GTFOML!!

stay away...stay away.