Alaska’s Most Common Occupations

The Selling Floor

As the owner of Circular, any given day might find Stalder cleaning the toilets or marketing the business. These duties are encompassed by SOC 11-1021 General and Operations Managers, who numbered about 6,150 in 2023. Customers mostly see her as a retail salesperson though.

“Styling assistance, research on behalf of customers, visual merchandising in the store, assistance in ordering based on knowledge of customer needs and desires” are among the tasks she lists.

Stalder had zero experience when she started the shop in 2007. “Absolutely none,” she recalls. “But I had faith in myself. I knew I could learn.” Stalder had worked as a consultant, mostly helping organizations apply for grants.

Turns out the skills overlap. Stalder says, “When I had my consulting business, I held people’s hands. I take care of them. It’s my nature.”

Circular sells everything from pajamas to ballgowns, mostly to women. “They really appreciate that we know who they are, we know what they like,” says Stalder. “I text my customers if I have something I think they’re going to like. Never, ever any pressure; that’s the last thing I want. But I want them to know it’s here.”

While many retail sales positions are entry-level, the personal attentiveness at boutiques like Circular is not a service that every applicant can provide. “I need somebody who can understand how clothes look on a body type,” Stalder explains. “You have to give people their space but also be as helpful as you can; a cashier just takes your money.”

A separate occupation, SOC 41-2011 Cashier is quite abundant, with 5,720 counted in 2023. Such workers are quite evident at supermarket check stands, but the distinction can be blurry. At a small shop, the person ringing up an order might be a cashier or a retail sales employee, depending on the degree of customer interaction.

While behind the counter at a Hot Topic store, Devin Merilatt engaged in retail sales, above and beyond cashiering. “When I worked there, I was definitely trying to help them find what they were looking for. You go there today, and almost every worker in there greets you,” says Merilatt.

Tables and Counters

These days, Merilatt interacts with customers in a different occupation: SOC 35-3031 Waiters and Waitresses. She’s a server at IHOP, yet she considers sales to be part of the job.

“The companies like to say it’s all about the sales, so you want to upsell as much as you can,” says Merilatt. “I always found that kind of hard to do, but I just want to make sure the guests or customers are satisfied with their experience.”

The 3,730 waiters and waitresses in Alaska, as of 2023, are second in the Food Preparation category only to SOC 35-2023 Fast Food and Counter Workers, numbering 5,740. Merilatt used to be among them, too, when she sold pretzels at Auntie Anne’s for three years.

“It was a good job. We didn’t get tips there, but the hours were good, and it was still enough to pay the bills,” she recalls. Since then, Merilatt has waited tables at Village Inn and at IHOP’s corporate sister Applebee’s.

She prefers tables to counters. “I feel like counter service prepared me for all the other serving,” Merilatt says. “It’s all about the tips, really. Having money you can walk away with every day is really comforting.”

Fast-food workers are underrepresented in the Corporate 100. With a single statewide owner, Subway of Alaska shows up in the ranking. The chain has the most locations in Alaska, with fifty-three. Starbucks has forty-nine, and McDonald’s has twenty-seven.

MaryAlice Larmi spent time behind a Starbucks counter inside a Target store, but she would’ve been open to jobs outside of food service. “I applied at, like, Bath and Body Works, Victoria’s Secret, stores at a mall,” she recalls. But she had experience as a waitress at Denny’s and a hostess at a restaurant. “I definitely preferred food service,” says Larmi. “It does come with tips, generally.”

McDonald’s in Soldotna attracted Rachel Nill when she was seeking a job in high school. It paid well while hiring teenagers. “I was pretty much one of the busy bees, working the front counter,” says Nill.

After she finished college with a master’s degree, Nill tried returning to fast food. “I applied to every entry-level job possible,” she says. “I had no other choice; I had to pay rent.” McDonald’s turned her down, but not just because her education made her overqualified.

Nill figures she was swamped by too many other applicants. “They’re so oversaturated now that you can’t even get a job at McDonalds,” she says.

Clerks and Nurses

Nill’s application was accepted last fall by McLaughlin Youth Center, the juvenile justice facility in Anchorage operated by the Alaska Department of Family and Community Services. Her state job title is Office Assistant 2, making her part of the Office Clerk, General cohort.

“In the nursing department, I am the only clerical person there,” Nill says. “We do have administrative assistants and such in our administration section—people who pay the bills and handle all the finances, the running of the actual building itself.”

That leaves Nill to handle scheduling, uploading documents, processing paperwork, and restocking supplies. She notes that Office Assistant 2 is designed as a steppingstone in an administrative career.

Even though little experience is required, Nill believes not everyone can fill the job. “Anybody can scan a file, upload it to a portal, and do the paperwork,” she says, but “are you going to be a good fit for the group of people you’re working with?”

In her section, Nill works with registered nurses, the kind who don’t work at a hospital. “It is a 7-to-3, Monday to Friday. They do not work on the weekends; they do not pull twelve-hour shifts,” says Nill of her colleagues. “You do have to do all this crazy work that you normally wouldn’t do in a hospital, but you don’t have to pull a random twelve-hour shift in the middle of the night or get put on call for some other thing.” She adds that working parents find the environment appealing.

With a few months of experience, Nill now has office clerical skills that could transfer to plenty of workplaces. The Alaska Department of Corrections is always looking for people, she notes, or she could pivot into a medical office. “I find it most interesting that I ended up in hybrid healthcare and clerical work at the same time. It’s like I have two different skillsets I’m working on,” she says.

Larmi spent five years at the front desk of a medical office, handling intake for an oncology clinic. She also worked for two years as office administrator for a real estate agency. “Making sure files were organized properly,” she recalls. “Emails and some event coordinating. That translated into this job as a theatre professional now. My main job is event coordination.” As volunteer coordinator at Anchorage Community Theatre, Larmi expects to stay a while. She says she doesn’t dread going to work, now that she can focus on making art, not money.

Convenient Money

Except for management and supervisory jobs, or the professional track of registered nurses, Alaska’s most common occupations tend to be part-time or temporary positions. Not necessarily careers, that is. For instance, all Larmi’s odd jobs were secondary to her artistic aspirations. “It wasn’t a career, but it was a convenient way to make money and not have to have a college education,” she says.

Merilatt, who thinks of herself primarily as an actress and filmmaker, works at IHOP part-time. “I wanted to have my nights free to do whatever,” she says. “I prefer diners so I can do theatre at night.” Compared to other types of jobs, she’s found the money from food service to be sufficient. For entry-level workers, it also provides an important foundation for a work ethic, she believes. But Merilatt doesn’t see herself as a waitress forever.

Nor does Nill expect to stay in an office job. “I don’t think I would hate doing this job for the rest of my life,” she says. However, “It’s not what I went to college for.” Nill studied to be a museum curator (SOC 25-4012, with sixty in Alaska as of 2023). Clerical work isn’t a million miles away, she figures, “like logging where the artifacts are and planning where you want to put them on the wall. That sort of stuff.”

Museum curators have barely 1 percent of the job openings compared to office clerical positions. Yet competition is fiercer among the wider pool, where anybody without a master’s degree can qualify.

Peers See Peers

Not that Nill sees herself as competing with fellow office clerks. “We’re not competing; we’re just distant coworkers,” she says. “Have you ever had to scan, like, thirty pages, and your printer breaks down, and you have to be on the phone with the tech? Yes, absolutely. I get that, and it sucks.”

Peers recognize peers in retail sales too. Stalder recently bought a couch at Treeforms Furniture Gallery, and the service impressed her. “They did a great job helping me,” she says. “I was very particular about what I wanted, and they go the extra mile. She came to my house and looked at the space.”

Food service workers often find themselves on both sides. When Merilatt goes out to eat, “I always try to be patient with them. I feel like I understand what they go through,” she says.

She notes that waitstaff are part of a customer’s life for up to an hour at a time. She advises, “If you have a good server who’s really attentive to you and talkative and personable, I feel like you should want to tip them at least 15 percent.”

Larmi’s restaurant experiences likewise taught her to be patient with servers. “I tend to give a lot of grace, unless they’re being downright rude. Like, if things are slow, I totally get that,” she says. “I like to also tip well because I get that you’re not really making enough money doing jobs like that.”

Fast food counter staff, among the lowest-paid jobs in Alaska, have a lifelong friend in Nill. She says, “The stress of that job, I remember very well. I pride myself in being probably the most understanding customer they will have that day.”

Workers in common occupations may not be employed by the biggest businesses, but they are in good company with their thousands of peers in the labor force.