ALASKA'S BROADBAND WORKFORCE CHALLENGES

Alaska will need thousands of skilled workers to construct and deploy broadband for all residents in all regions of the state over the next several years. More skills than degrees will be required for telecommunications jobs that include construction, installation, and maintenance of broadband.

Workforce development planning for broadband in Alaska is imperative because all 50 states will compete for funding and workers. Nationwide demands are expected to create up to 200,000 jobs for broadband construction and deployment as a result of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) Internet for All Broadband Equity & Access Deployment Program, or BEAD. This will have a big impact on an industry already experiencing labor shortages.

U.S. Broadband Workforce Shortage

In 2021, the U.S. telecommunications industry employed 672,000 workers who earned an average of $77,500. The industry projects an additional 850,000 more direct broadband and 5G jobs by 2025. This projection is occurring while there is a severe shortage of telecommunications workers nationally – the labor pool has been shrinking for several years and the industry lacks an efficient pipeline to bring in new workers, caused mainly by:

• An aging workforce
• Lack of career awareness by students and job seekers
• Lack of career and technical education pathways to industry jobs.

Additionally, the existing broadband workforce lacks diversity: it is predominantly white (59.6%) and male (89.8%), and industry workers are older than the median age worker in the US.

Alaska’s Broadband Workforce Landscape

These conditions are also true in Alaska. In March 2023, the Alaska Department of Labor & Workforce Development’s Research and Analysis (R&A) Section reported Alaska’s working-age population has declined nine years in a row. The number of residents aged 18 to 64 dropped from a high of 479,000 in 2013 to 449,000 in 2022. The unemployment rate is 3.6%, slightly less than the national rate of 3.7%. Unemployment in Alaska’s rural communities is much higher because there are fewer jobs available.

Today, every Alaska industry is adding new jobs, and most are projected to continue this trend. Alaska will need thousands more workers each year over the next decade to meet the overall labor demand. Labor gaps are expected to grow not only in the broadband industry but across multiple industries that rely on skilled construction trades workers and professions such as engineers, project managers, and safety specialists — creating intense competition for workers among industries.

Alaska’s Challenges

Developing a broadband-industry construction and deployment workforce is critical for the future of rural Alaska and the overall economy. These are some of the workforce development obstacles in our way as we begin the planning process:

Identifying broadband occupations and skills

There are no specific Broadband “Job Codes” recognized by the United States Department of Labor (“DOL”). Classification is determined by skills and education, but not necessarily by industry. Academic institutions, employers and workers are not educated on how the codes are determined, nor do they use the same codes, which has caused under reporting of the Industry workforce. State and regional workforce development organizations have not classified Broadband Industry jobs as high skill/high wage even though such jobs can increase earning potential significantly within a short amount of time through certification and training programs.

Without the appropriate occupational classification of such industries in an expanding broadband labor market, it is nearly impossible to measure worker value, earnings potential, and skills acquisition in these occupations, and it is challenging to develop career pathways and related learning curricula to ease transitions into these roles. Further, despite the shortage of highly skilled, technical workers in areas that include cybersecurity, data science, and other computing-heavy jobs, the jobs created by the IIJA (https://www.brookings.edu/essay/infrastructure-workforce/) are not reliant on strict technical and educational credentialling. Instead, these jobs tend to be more task oriented, requiring more experiential and "on the job" immersion for workers, which can increase the engagement and improve the quality of employment for diverse and under-represented talent, especially workers who have been historically marginalized in the labor force.

Federal agencies and workforce practitioners, including O*Net, NIST,and other employee-serving organizations, must develop better taxonomies of broadband occupations and competency-based learning progressions to better measure, train, and narrow the scope of these occupations.

Marketing broadband industry jobs and increasing career awareness

To date, insufficient and underwhelming data exists on the workforce opportunities within the broadband industry, including in areas like wireline, wireless, fiber, satellite, and other telecommunications services. To recruit and retain high-quality and skilled employees, workers need to know what and where the opportunities are.

Competition from other industries for new workers

Alaska has unique workforce development challenges due to its vast size, geography, arctic climate, and distance between communities not connected by road. Several populations are underrepresented in the telecom workforce. Broadband industry employers will need a qualified supply of labor to fill industry jobs and priority occupations in every region of the state now and into the future. Alaska also has significant labor shortages in other industries; construction, oil, mining and maritime, for example, that need surveyors, skilled trades workers, engineers, safety personnel and other occupations. There will be a great deal of competition for resident workers with cross-industry skills. Recruiting, training, and assisting rural residents to enter broadband employment are critical for supplying new workers to fill construction and deployment jobs as well as a legacy workforce to support the industry and use of internet services in rural communities. Yet, hiring, training, and retention gaps remain vast across this workforce, as fewer workers are entering these careers and more workers are retiring and leaving these jobs than ever before. At the same time, too few of these job opportunities are filled by younger students, women, and people of color. Due to the remoteness of many of these communities it would be very beneficial to have residents trained to be able to assist in the operations and maintenance of the infrastructure once it is put in place.

Shortage of broadband training programs, instructors, and facilities

More info here.

Lack of uniform training standards

More info here.

Cost of travel and housing for rural residents to obtain training

More info here.

Limited access to high-speed internet in rural areas

More info here.

Remoteness and terrain in which work is performed

For more than 70% of the unserved and underserved communities in Alaska there is either a seasonal restriction, or a limitation associated with the number of trips per year. For example, while some of the communities have year-round open ports, due to the size of the communities, there may only be one or two barges per year. This absolutely is the case for the seasonal ocean barges. There is a spring barge and a fall barge. Once the barge has sailed in the fall, the shipper has two options, wait until the ice clears in the spring, or charter a C-130 Hercules aircraft. While most locations do have accessibility via small aircraft, this will not accommodate large fiber spools, electronic racks, generators, fuel tanks and shelters. Finally, all the evaluations in Table below have a starting point of Anchorage or Fairbanks. Prior to arriving in Alaska, the materials must make a ~1500-mile ocean journey or a ~2,200-to-2,600-mile road journey through Canada. All of this has the potential to increase the costs by an order of magnitude or more. It can also cause game-changing project delays if there are upstream supply chain delays. If materials are delayed at the supplier such that a seasonal barge is missed, it can turn into an entire year’s postponement of the project.

ABO Evaluation of Transport and Accessibility Methods
Accessibility Means	Accessibility Count of the Unserved and Underserved Communities	Accessibility % of the Unserved and Underserved Communities	Cumulative %	Degree of Accessibility Difficulty
Seasonal River Barge Only	6	3.2%	3.2%	Extremely Difficult
Seasonal Summer Road	5	2.6%	5.8%
Small Aircraft Only	21	11.1%	16.9%
Seasonal River Barge and Small Aircraft	31	16.4%	33.3%
Seasonal Ocean Barge and Small Aircraft	27	14.3%	47.6%
Year-Round Ocean Barge	19	10.1%	57.7%
Year-Round Ocean Barge and Small Aircraft	25	13.2%	70.9%
Year-Round Ocean Barge and Jet Aircraft	1	0.5%	71.4%	Very Difficult
Jet Aircraft Cargo Only	1	0.5%	72.0%
Road System (through Canada) and Year-Round Ocean Barge	1	0.5%	72.5%
On the Road System	52	27.5%	100.0%	High-Cost Area Equivalent to the contiguous 48 States

The backbone for any telecommunications development is infrastructure. It is an essential part of Alaska's strategy made more difficult by Alaska's unique challenges unlike anywhere else in the world. But because of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act ("Bipartisan Infrastructure Law") Alaska has been given a once in a generation chance to build a sustaining infrastructure that will ensure digital equity for all Alaskans through a combination of private and public investment. However, the effort is not without challenge. Here are some of the unique aspects of building and managing telecommunications in Alaska.