Mortgage lending activity - the number of loans, their dollar volume and sales volume - fell statewide in the second half of 2007 compared to a year earlier. The average sales price for a single-family home fell slightly, while it increased for condominiums and multi-family homes.

For the first time in Alaska's history and Trends 100's 21-year history, a private Alaska employer broke the 4,000-employment barrier. It's no surprise that it's Providence Health & Services. The medical provider grabbed the top spot as the state's largest private-sector employer back in 2001, and it's grown since then.

Few economic topics generate as much consistent interest in Alaska as the state's high cost of living. For all its resource wealth, Alaska's relatively small population depends on outside sources for most of its consumer goods, and the state's remoteness creates extra costs. Interest in the cost of living has grown even more acute in the last few years as energy prices have skyrocketed and food prices have climbed. This annual article on the cost of living in Alaska will look at the most current information available from a variety of measures and surveys in an attempt to give multiple perspectives on this high-profile topic.

It's hard to say whether Skagway would even exist had it not been for the Klondike gold rush touched off by the 1896 discovery of gold in Canada's Yukon Territory. The Tlingit people had fi shed and hunted in the area for centuries, but the town itself took form when hopeful miners poured into the area on their way to the Chilkoot and White Pass trails, and then beyond to the Yukon.

Alaska men, on average, continued to earn significantly more than women in 2006, and the wage difference between the two has not changed much since 1999. Female workers, as in previous years, earned less than male workers across all industry and age groups, almost all geographic areas, and most occupations in Alaska.

Economic change in Alaska often comes with a bang. The short list of transformative events includes the gold rush, the sudden and explosive growth of the military in the state during World War II, the discovery of oil and the construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline.

Nonresident workers in 2006 made up 19.9 percent of Alaska's workers and earned 12.9 percent of the total wages, representing 78,840 workers who made $1.53 billion. Those are slight increases from 2005, when nonresidents made up 19.1 percent of all workers and earned 12.2 percent of total wages.

There are few industries in Alaska as large or that have grown as much as health care. It has a presence nearly everywhere in the state and includes a broad spectrum of occupations, ranging from surgeons to home health aides. The industry employs more people in Alaska than the federal government, state government, oil industry or most other industries. The industry had at least 29,000 jobs in 2007 and its payroll was about $1.2 billion.

For 20 consecutive years now Alaska's job count has grown. It's the longest uninterrupted stretch of growth since statehood and one that only seven other states can match. The streak is expected to continue in 2008, although growth is forecasted to slow to 0.6 percent.

The Alaska departments of Health and Social Services, Labor and Workforce Development, and Commerce, Community and Economic Development developed a survey that was distributed to a sample of Alaska's private-sector and local government employers by the Department of Labor during the summer of 2006. The survey focused on peak seasonal employment in an attempt to assess the impact of fi rm size, cost and other issues related to employer offering and employee take-up of health insurance at the high point of Alaska's 2006 employment.