Preliminary data show Alaska's job growth slowed to 0.5 percent in 2013, and the state is expected to add jobs at a rate of 0.4 percent this year. That would make 2014 the fifth straight year of employment increases since the 2009 downturn, but the growth will be at a lower rate than the state's 10-year average. Shrinking government employment is a major reason for this tempered forecast. Government has traditionally provided slow but steady job growth in Alaska, but several years of cuts - mainly federal - have put a damper on overall job growth.

People of Asian and Pacific Islander descent form the fastest-growing racial group in Alaska, expanding by 60 percent between 2000 and 2010 - a gain of more than 17,000 people. Pacific Islanders by themselves grew at an even faster rate, more than doubling in population during the same 10-year span.

More than 20,000 retail salespeople worked in Alaska in 2002, and for more than 15,000 of them, retail was their main job. Ten years later, most of this group still lived in the state and about 17 percent of those who could be located had made retail sales a continuing career. The others had moved on to more than 500 other occupations, from accounting clerks and roustabouts to registered nurses and attorneys.

Living in Alaska presents many opportunities and challenges, and finding a home is often one of them. In the coming months, Trends will feature regional housing profiles that detail some of these costs, as Alaska is so large and diverse that its local markets can differ widely. Despite those local differences, it's helpful to first examine the state housing market as a whole to see how it differs from the rest of the nation.

Surrounded by mountain ranges on all sides, the Copper River Basin, located in what was once the bottom of a massive ice-age glacial lake, carves out its own identity among Alaska regions. One of Alaska's major waterways, the Copper River descends from the Wrangell Mountains and heads north before taking a counterclockwise turn through the basin, the Chugach Mountains, and finally empties into the Gulf of Alaska.

Alaska's population has expanded at a relatively fast pace over the past two decades, with typical growth of over 1 percent a year compared to less than three-quarters of a percent for the nation as a whole. Much of the state's recent growth has been due to its relatively young population and high birth rates.

Consumer prices rose 3.1 percent in Anchorage in 2013 - more than the 2.2 percent increase the year before but close to the city's 10-year average of 2.7 percent. The big surprise for 2013 was that energy prices went down in Anchorage after playing a major role in the rise over recent years. Instead, the biggest increases were in transportation, medical care, clothing, and housing costs.

When entrepreneur E.T. Barnette was unceremoniously dumped on the banks of the Chena River in late summer over a century ago, it would have been impossible to foresee that the second-largest city in Alaska would form where he landed after a forced detour. Fueled by gold rush fever and en route to Tanacross to establish a trading post, Barnette was thwarted by river water too low to navigate and the shadow of fall hanging over his journey. After pushing the steamboat captain as far as he could, Barnette found himself hundreds of miles from his destination with a long winter ahead in the Tanana Valley.

Alaska has about 110,000 people in their twenties today, 25,000 more than it had in 2000. That's more twentysomethings than the state has had since the early 1980s, when Alaska was awash in young workers attracted first by pipeline construcion and then the boom years fueled by new oil revenue.

Alaska is projected to gain 36,113 jobs between 2012 and 2022 for a growth rate of 10.8 percent. The health care and social assistance sector will grow the most at a projected 25 percent, followed closely by mining - minus oil and gas - at 24.8 percent. Two other notable categories - oil and gas extraction and professional and business services - are likely to grow at a faster rate than the economy overall. On the other end of the spectrum, we expect construction and information to grow slower than overall employment.

Alaska's rich seafood resources are an important part of the state's economy and a source of jobs and income for thousands of people. At the beginning of a long economic chain that ends with salmon or halibut on someone's dinner table are the people who harvest the seafood from the state's oceans and rivers.

By most measures, Anchorage's economy is young. Unlike most U.S. cities, from its beginning, automobiles traveled its roads, electricity lighted its homes, and phones were commonplace. There's also a number of Anchorage residents alive today who have witnessed most of the city's economic story.