2. Cash on the Street

2.1 Labor Cost—$1.203 billion in 1999

About one-third of the operating budget is labor cost. This includes not only the salaries but also the benefits paid on behalf of the 17,451 full-time permanent, 2,811 part-time permanent, and 1,158 temporary employees.

Just under half of total personal services expenditures were generated in three state agencies—the University of Alaska, the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, and the Department of Health and Social Services.

The use of part-time and temporary workers is concentrated in the Departments of Fish and Game, Transportation and Public Facilities, and Natural Resources. In addition, a large share of legislative employees are part-time.

The number of people working at any time is not the same as the number in the budget. There are always some vacant positions, and there are some part-time and temporary workers, for example, in University research positions that are not reflected in these numbers.

The expenditure per full-time employee varies by agency based on the occupational and skill levels as well as the share of non-full-time employees of each agency. The Department of Corrections, with almost all full-time employees, had an average expenditure per worker of $62 thousand (which includes benefits).

The largest state departments are comparable, in number of employees, to the largest private employers in the state. Two private firms—Safeway Foods and Providence Medical Center—each have about 3 thousand employees, and Fred Meyer has about 2 thousand.

About one-third of the operating budget covers the cost of state workers. (The capital budget pays some of the costs of some state workers, but that money shows up in the operating budget as the result of transfers from the capital to the operating budget.)

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