Alaska's population has gotten older over the past 10 years. Alaska's median age in 1998 was 27.5 compared to 33.5 in 2008. The percentage of older Alaskans has also increased over the past decade. In 1998, 5.4 percent of the state's population was 65 and over, by 2008, the percentage rose to 7.3 percent.

Alaska's population increased 10.3 percent, or 64,781 people, from 2000 to 2009, bringing the state's population to 692,314, based on estimates released in January by the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development. With only a year left in the decade, Alaska's population has so far been growing at a slower average annual rate in the 2000s (1.1 percent) than in the 1990s (1.3 percent). Despite the trend of slow growth, Alaska's population grew at an above-average rate from 2008 to 2009, increasing about 1.5 percent or 10,337 people.

No Alaska industry has grown as much as health care, one of the state's largest industries. It had at least 30,000 jobs in 2008 and its payroll was more than $1.4 billion. Health care employs more people in Alaska than the state government, oil industry or most other industries. And few industries are as geographically widespread and employ such a broad spectrum of occupations.

Are people leaving Alaska's Native villages and other rural communities to move to Anchorage? That question has recently been of substantial interest for educators, government and community leaders, and a wide range of service providers. Although attempts have been made to document the trends, questions persist. How many people are involved? What communities are losing people? What are the characteristics of the movers and are the movements permanent?

Alaska's 21-year streak of job growth ended in 2009. It was a good run, especially for an economy that earned a boom-and-bust reputation during the eventful 1970s and 1980s. Over the course of the 21-year span that began in 1988, the state chugged right through two national recessions - one in the early 1990s and another in 2001 - without suffering a serious setback in terms of job losses. Boom-and-bust Alaska had become old-reliable Alaska.

If the U.S. Census Bureau wants to count Alaskans living in remote areas they've got to be flexible enough to show up when people are home and that's exactly what they're planning to do. On Jan. 25, 2010 - before spring breakup and when many rural Alaskans head off to their fish camps - Census Bureau Director Robert Groves plans to personally fly to Noorvik, to meet and tally the first residents in the nation to be counted for Census 2010.

Alaska is once again the nation's No. 1 fishing state, a position it's held since 1975. The state's 2008 harvest, worth a record $1.7 billion, topped the state's previous record - $1.66 billion in 1992 - and was 4.3 times the value of the nation's No. 2 fishing state, Massachusetts.

People interested in the economy - and who isn't these days? - know that the U.S. unemployment rate has soared over the last year and a half. The Federal Reserve, investors and politicians are among those watching the rate closely for signs that the country is emerging from a deep national recession.

In Alaska, oil prices are usually discussed in the context of their impact on state revenue and budgets. With no state sales or income taxes, oil generates the dominant share of what state government spends. But oil prices also have a large effect on consumer prices in a state where heating homes and transporting goods are major expenses. Oil prices shot up above $140 in 2008 before falling back to around $30 later in the same year. That unprecedented volatility affected Alaskans? household expenses in a variety of ways.

The economic fundamentals of the Denali Borough have changed little since it was created in 1990. The basic economic sectors of this small borough of 1,848 residents were largely in place in 1990. Clear Air Force Station had been operating since 1961. Denali National Park and Preserve, created in 1917, had already existed for some 70 years. The Usibelli Coal Mine had been mining coal since 1943; it started exporting it to South Korea in 1985. And a power plant in the borough had been generating power for Fairbanks and elsewhere in the Interior since 1967.