title: Walmart

text: In 2004, Walmart bought the 118 stores in the Bompreço supermarket chain in northeastern Brazil. In late 2005, it took control of the Brazilian operations of Sonae Distribution Group through its new subsidiary, WMS Supermercados do Brasil, thus acquiring control of the Nacional and Mercadorama supermarket chains, the leaders in the Rio Grande do Sul and Paraná states, respectively. None of these stores were rebranded. Walmart operated 61 Bompreço supermarkets, 39 Hiper Bompreço stores. It also ran 57 Walmart Supercenters, 27 Sam's Clubs, and 174 Todo Dia stores. With the acquisition of Bompreço and Sonae, by 2010, Walmart was the third-largest supermarket chain in Brazil, behind Carrefour and Pão de Açúcar.


title: Walmart

text: Walmart Brasil, the operating company, has its head office in Barueri, São Paulo State, and regional offices in Curitiba, Paraná; Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul; Recife, Pernambuco; and Salvador, Bahia. Walmart Brasil operates under the banners Todo Dia, Nacional, Bompreço, Walmart Supercenter, Maxxi Atacado, Hipermercado Big, Hiper Bompreço, Sam's Club, Mercadorama, Walmart Posto (Gas Station), Supermercado Todo Dia, and Hiper Todo Dia. Recently, the company started the conversion process of all Hiper Bompreço and Big stores into Walmart Supercenters and Bompreço, Nacional and Mercadorama stores into the Walmart Supermercado brand.


title: Walmart

text: Since August 2018, Walmart Inc. only holds a minority stake in Walmart Brasil, which was renamed Grupo Big on August 12, 2019, with 20% of the company's shares, and private equity firm Advent International holding 80% ownership of the company. On March 24, 2021, it was announced that Carrefour would be acquiring Grupo Big.


title: Walmart

text: Walmart Argentina was founded in 1995 and operates stores under the banners Walmart Supercenter, Changomas, Mi Changomas, and Punto Mayorista. On November 6, 2020, it was announced that Walmart has sold its Argentine operations to Grupo de Narváez.


title: Walmart

text: Walmart's UK subsidiary Asda (which retained its name after being acquired by Walmart) is based in Leeds and accounted for 42.7  percent of 2006 sales of Walmart's international division. In contrast to the U.S. operations, Asda was originally and still remains primarily a grocery chain, but with a stronger focus on non-food items than most UK supermarket chains other than Tesco. In 2010 Asda acquired stores from Netto UK. In addition to small suburban Asda Supermarkets, larger stores are branded Supercentres. Other banners include Asda Superstores, Asda Living, and Asda Petrol Fueling Station. In July 2015, Asda updated its logo featuring the Walmart Asterisks behind the first 'A' in the Logo. In May 2018, Walmart announced plans to sell Asda to rival Sainsbury's for $10.1 billion. Under the terms of the deal, Walmart would have received a 42% stake in the combined company and about £3 billion in cash. However, in April 2019, the United Kingdom's Competition and Markets Authority blocked the proposed sale of Asda to Sainsburys.


title: Walmart

text: On October 2, 2020, it was announced that Walmart will sell a majority stake of Asda to a consortium of Zuber and Mohsin Issa (the owners of EG Group) and private equity firm TDR Capital for £6.8bn, pending approval from the Competition and Markets Authority.


title: Walmart

text: In Japan, Walmart owned 100 percent of Seiyu (西友 "Seiyū") It operates under the Seiyu (Hypermarket), Seiyu (Supermarket), Seiyu (General Merchandise), Livin, and Sunny banners.


title: Walmart

text: On November 16, 2020, Walmart announced they would be selling 65% of their shares in the company to the private-equity firm KKR in a deal valuing 329 stores and 34,600 employees at $1.6 billion. Walmart is supposed to retain 15% and a seat on the board, while a joint-venture between KKR and Japanese company Rakuten Inc. will receive 20%.


title: Walmart

text: An April 2012 investigation by "The New York Times" reported the allegations of a former executive of Walmart de Mexico that, in September 2005, the company had paid bribes via local fixers to officials throughout Mexico in exchange for construction permits, information, and other favors, which gave Walmart a substantial advantage over competitors. Walmart investigators found credible evidence that Mexican and American laws had been broken. Concerns were also raised that Walmart executives in the United States had "hushed up" the allegations. A follow-up investigation by "The New York Times", published December 17, 2012, revealed evidence that regulatory permission for siting, construction, and operation of nineteen stores had been obtained through bribery. There was evidence that a bribe of was paid to change a zoning map, which enabled the opening of a Walmart store a mile from a historical site in San Juan Teotihuacán in 2004. After the initial article was released, Walmart released a statement denying the allegations and describing its anti-corruption policy. While an official Walmart report states that it had found no evidence of corruption, the article alleges that previous internal reports had indeed turned up such evidence before the story became public. "Forbes" magazine contributor Adam Hartung also commented that the bribery scandal was a reflection of Walmart's "serious management and strategy troubles", stating, "[s]candals are now commonplace ... [e]ach scandal points out that Walmart's strategy is harder to navigate and is running into big problems".


title: Walmart

text: In 2012, there was an incident with CJ's Seafood, a crawfish processing firm in Louisiana that was partnered with Walmart, that eventually gained media attention for the mistreatment of its 40 H-2B visa workers from Mexico. These workers experienced harsh living conditions in tightly packed trailers outside of the work facility, physical threats, verbal abuse, and were forced to work day-long shifts. Many of the workers were afraid to take action about the abuse due to the fact that the manager threatened the lives of their family members in the U.S. and Mexico if the abuse were to be reported. Eight of the workers confronted management at CJ's Seafood about the mistreatment; however, the management denied the abuse allegations and the workers went on strike. The workers then took their stories to Walmart due to their partnership with CJ's. While Walmart was investigating the situation, the workers collected 150,000 signatures of supporters who agreed that Walmart should stand by the workers and take action. In June 2012, the visa workers held a protest and day-long hunger strike outside of the apartment building where a Walmart board member resided. Following this protest, Walmart announced its final decision to no longer work with CJ's Seafood. Less than a month later, the Department of Labor fined CJ's Seafood "approximately $460,000 in back-pay, safety violations, wage and hour violations, civil damages, and fines for abuses to the H-2B program. The company has since shut down."


title: Walmart

text: Sam's Club is a chain of warehouse clubs that sell groceries and general merchandise, often in bulk. Locations generally range in size from , with an average club size of approximately . The first Sam's Club was opened by Walmart, Inc. in 1983 in Midwest City, Oklahoma under the name "Sam's Wholesale Club". The chain was named after its founder Sam Walton. As of October 31, 2022, Sam's Club operated 600 membership warehouse clubs and accounted for 11.3% of Walmart's revenue at $57.839 billion in fiscal year 2019. Kathryn McLay is the president and CEO of Sam's Club.


title: Walmart

text: Based in San Bruno, California, Walmart's Global eCommerce division provides online retailing for Walmart, Sam's Club, Asda, and all other international brands. There are several locations in the United States in California and Oregon: San Bruno, Sunnyvale, Brisbane, and Portland. Locations outside of the United States include Shanghai (China), Leeds (United Kingdom), and Bangalore (India).


title: Walmart

text: About 40 percent of products sold in Walmart are private labels, which are produced for the company through contracts with manufacturers. Walmart began offering private label brands in 1991, with the launch of Sam's Choice, a line of drinks produced by Cott Beverages for Walmart. Sam's Choice quickly became popular and by 1993, was the third-most-popular beverage brand in the United States. Other Walmart brands include Great Value and Equate in the U.S. and Canada and Smart Price in Britain. A 2006 study talked of "the magnitude of mind-share Walmart appears to hold in the shoppers' minds when it comes to the awareness of private label brands and retailers."


title: Walmart

text: In 2010, the company teamed with Procter & Gamble to produce "Secrets of the Mountain" and "The Jensen Project", two-hour family movies which featured the characters using Walmart and Procter & Gamble-branded products. "The Jensen Project" also featured a preview of a product to be released in several months in Walmart stores. A third movie, "A Walk in My Shoes", also aired in 2010 and a fourth is in production. Walmart's director of brand marketing also serves as co-chair of the Association of National Advertisers's Alliance for Family Entertainment.


title: Walmart

text: In September 2016, Walmart purchased e-commerce company Jet.com, founded in 2014 by Marc Lore, to start competing with Amazon.com. Jet.com has acquired its own share of online retailers such as Hayneedle in March 2016, Shoebuy.com in December 2016, and ModCloth in March 2017. Walmart also acquired Parcel, a delivery service in New York, on September 29, 2017.


title: Walmart

text: On February 15, 2017, Walmart acquired Moosejaw, an online active outdoor retailer, for approximately $51 million. Moosejaw brought with it partnerships with more than 400 brands, including Patagonia, The North Face, Marmot, and Arc'teryx.


title: Walmart

text: Marc Lore, Walmart's U.S. e-commerce CEO, said that Walmart's existing physical infrastructure of almost 5,000 stores around the U.S. will enhance their digital expansion by doubling as warehouses for e-commerce without increasing overhead. Walmart offers in-store pickup for online orders at 1,000 stores with plans to eventually expand the service to all of its stores.


title: Walmart

text: On May 9, 2018, Walmart announced its intent to acquire a 77% controlling stake in the Indian e-commerce website Flipkart for $16 billion (beating bids by Amazon.com), subject to regulatory approval. Following its completion, the website's management will report to Marc Lore. Completion of the deal was announced on August 18, 2018.


title: Walmart

text: Walmart is headquartered in the Walmart Home Office complex in Bentonville, Arkansas. The company's business model is based on selling a wide variety of general merchandise at low prices. Doug McMillon became Walmart's CEO on February 1, 2014. He has also worked as the head of Sam's Club and Walmart International. The company refers to its employees as "associates". All Walmart stores in the U.S. and Canada also have designated "greeters" at the entrance, a practice pioneered by Sam Walton and later imitated by other retailers. Greeters are trained to help shoppers find what they want and answer their questions.


title: Walmart

text: For many years, associates were identified in the store by their signature blue vest, but this practice was discontinued in June 2007 and replaced with khaki pants and polo shirts. The wardrobe change was part of a larger corporate overhaul to increase sales and rejuvenate the company's stock price. In September 2014, the uniform was again updated to bring back a vest (paid for by the company) for store employees over the same polos and khaki or black pants paid for by the employee. The vest is navy blue for Walmart employees at Supercenters and discounts stores, lime green for Walmart Neighborhood Market employees, and yellow for self-check-out associates; door greeters, and customer service managers. All three state "Proud Walmart Associate" on the left breast and the "Spark" logo covering the back. Reportedly one of the main reasons the vest was reintroduced was that some customers had trouble identifying employees. In 2016, self-checkout associates, door greeters and customer service managers began wearing a yellow vest to be better seen by customers. By requiring employees to wear uniforms that are made up of standard "streetwear", Walmart is not required to purchase the uniforms or reimburse employees which are required in some states, as long as that clothing can be worn elsewhere. Businesses are only legally required to pay for branded shirts and pants or clothes that would be difficult to wear outside of work.


title: Walmart

text: Unlike many other retailers, Walmart does not charge slotting fees to suppliers for their products to appear in the store. Instead, it focuses on selling more-popular products and provides incentives for store managers to drop unpopular products.


title: Walmart

text: From 2006 to 2010, the company eliminated its layaway program. In 2011, the company revived its layaway program.


title: Walmart

text: Walmart introduced its Site-To-Store program in 2007, after testing the program since 2004 on a limited basis. The program allows "walmart.com" customers to buy goods online with a free shipping option, and have goods shipped to the nearest store for pickup.


title: Walmart

text: On September 15, 2017, Walmart announced that it would build a new headquarters in Bentonville to replace its current 1971 building and consolidate operations that have spread out to 20 different buildings throughout Bentonville.


title: Walmart

text: According to watchdog group Documented, in 2020 Walmart contributed $140,000 to the Rule of Law Defense Fund, a fund-raising arm of the Republican Attorneys General Association.


title: Walmart

text: For the fiscal year ending January 31, 2019, Walmart reported net income of on $514.405 billion of revenue. The company's international operations accounted for $120.824 billion, or 23.7 percent, of its $510.329 billion of sales. Walmart is the world's 29th-largest public corporation, according to the Forbes Global 2000 list, and the largest public corporation when ranked by revenue.


title: Walmart

text: Walmart is governed by an eleven-member board of directors elected annually by shareholders. Gregory B. Penner, son-in-law of S. Robson Walton and the grandson-in-law of Sam Walton, serves as chairman of the board. Doug McMillon serves as president and chief executive officer. Current members of the board are:


title: Walmart

text: Notable former members of the board include Hillary Clinton (1985–1992) and Tom Coughlin (2003–2004), the latter having served as vice chairman. Clinton left the board before the 1992 U.S. presidential election, and Coughlin left in December 2005 after pleading guilty to wire fraud and tax evasion for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from Walmart.


title: Walmart

text: After Sam Walton's death in 1992, Don Soderquist, Chief Operating Officer and Senior Vice Chairman, became known as the "Keeper of the Culture".


title: Walmart

text: Walmart Inc. is a Delaware-domiciled joint-stock company registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, with its registered office located in Wolters Kluwer's Corporation Trust Center in Wilmington. it has 3,292,377,090 outstanding shares. These are held mainly by the Walton family, a number of institutions and funds.


title: Walmart

text: In North America, Walmart's primary competitors include grocery stores and department stores like Aldi, Lidl, Kmart, Kroger, Ingles, Publix, Target, Harris Teeter, Meijer, and Winn Dixie in the United States; Hudson's Bay, Loblaw retail stores, Sobeys, Metro, and Giant Tiger in Canada; and Comercial Mexicana and Soriana in Mexico. Competitors of Walmart's Sam's Club division are Costco and the smaller BJ's Wholesale Club chain. Walmart's move into the grocery business in the late 1990s set it against major supermarket chains in both the United States and Canada. Studies have typically found that Walmart’s prices are significantly lower than those of their competitors, and that Walmart’s presence is associated with lower food prices for households. Comparisons of performance metrics such as sales per square foot suggest that supermarkets in direct competition with Walmart Supercenters show significant decreases in profit margins, an effect that is strongest in the case of unionized competitors. Between 2000 and 2010, Walmart’s entry into new areas often lowered local food prices at other stores. However, recent studies have not found the same effect, suggesting that retailers may have changed their competitive strategies.


title: Walmart

text: While the idea that Walmart destroys small businesses is widely assumed to be true, research so far suggests that Walmart superstores have little effect on smaller retailers such as "Mom and Pop" businesses. Differences in impact appear to be specific to the goods sold. Small retailers may experience difficulty if they rely on selling products identical to those at Walmart or if they try to sell at lower prices.


title: Walmart

text: Dollar stores such as Family Dollar and Dollar General have been able to find a small niche market and compete successfully against Walmart. In 2004, Walmart responded by testing its own dollar store concept, a subsection of some stores called "Pennies-n-Cents".


title: Walmart

text: Walmart also had to face fierce competition in some foreign markets. For example, in Germany it had captured just 2 percent of the German food market following its entry into the market in 1997 and remained "a secondary player" behind Aldi with 19 percent. Walmart continues to do well in the UK, where its Asda subsidiary is the second-largest retailer.


title: Walmart

text: In May 2006, after entering the South Korean market in 1998, Walmart sold all 16 of its South Korean outlets to Shinsegae, a local retailer, for . Shinsegae re-branded the Walmarts as E-mart stores.


title: Walmart

text: Walmart struggled to export its brand elsewhere as it rigidly tried to reproduce its model overseas. In China, Walmart hopes to succeed by adapting and doing things preferable to Chinese citizens. For example, it found that Chinese consumers preferred to select their own live fish and seafood; stores began displaying the meat uncovered and installed fish tanks, leading to higher sales.


title: Walmart

text: In the United States, Walmart’s early growth occurred in the Southeast and lower Midwest. More recently, Walmart has expanded throughout the country. The number of Walmart stores per 1,000 people in 2019 was highest in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Alabama and Kansas, and lowest in Hawaii, California, New Jersey, Massachusetts and New York. California and New Jersey were two of the ten states with the largest increases in Supercenters between 2011 and 2020, along with Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Wisconsin.


title: Walmart

text: Walmart customers display strong customer loyalty and cite low prices as the most important reason for shopping there. Walmart has characterized their shoppers as falling into three main groups: "value-price shoppers" (people who like low prices and cannot afford much more), "brand aspirationals" (people with low incomes who buy well-known brands in hopes of assuring quality), and "price-sensitive affluents" (wealthier shoppers who seek deals). the average U.S. Walmart customer earned about $80,000 per year, above the U.S. average personal income of $63,214. Walmart reports that during times of rising inflation, customers become more sensitive to rising food prices, buying less expensive food items such as hot dogs and canned tuna rather than deli cold cuts. They also see more upper-income shoppers looking for bargains.


title: Walmart

text: Walmart shoppers have been reported to be politically conservative. A poll after the 2004 US presidential election reported that 76 percent of voters who shopped at Walmart once a week reported voting for George W. Bush while only 23 percent supported senator John Kerry. When measured against similar retailers in the U.S. in 2006, frequent Walmart shoppers were rated the most politically conservative. 54 percent of Americans who preferred to shop at Walmart reported that they opposed same-sex marriage, while 40 percent were in favor, reflecting the store's southern roots.


title: Walmart

text: Due to its concentration of stores in the Bible Belt, Walmart is known for its "tradition of tailoring its service to churchgoing customers". Walmart has carried clean versions of hip-hop audio CDs and in cooperation with The Timothy Plan, placed "plastic sheathes over suggestive women's periodicals and banned 'lad mags' such as Maxim" magazine. Walmart also caters to its Christian customer base by selling Christian books and media, such as VeggieTales videos and The Purpose-Driven Life, earning the company over annually.


title: Walmart

text: In 2006, Walmart took steps to expand its U.S. customer base, announcing a modification in its U.S. stores from a "one-size-fits-all" merchandising strategy to one designed to "reflect each of six demographic groups—African-Americans, the affluent, empty-nesters, Hispanics, suburbanites, and rural residents." Around six months later, it unveiled a new slogan:" "Saving people money so they can live better lives"".


title: Walmart

text: Walmart has also made steps to appeal to more liberal customers, for example, by rejecting the American Family Association's recommendations and carrying the DVD "Brokeback Mountain", a love story between two gay cowboys in Wyoming.


title: Walmart

text: In 2018, Walmart stopped selling guns and ammunition to persons younger than 21, following a similar move by Dick's Sporting Goods on the same day. In the same year, Walmart stopped selling military-style rifles that were commonly used in mass shootings.


title: Walmart

text: As of 2019, Walmart was a major retailer of firearms and ammunition. In 2019, after 23 people were killed in a mass shooting at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, Walmart announced that it would stop selling all handgun ammunition and certain short-barreled rifle ammunition. The company also announced that it would stop selling handguns in Alaska, the only state where the company still sold handguns. The move was expected to reduce Walmart's U.S. market share in ammunition from around 20% to around 6–9%. Walmart also stated that it was "respectfully requesting" that customers not openly carry weapons in Walmart stores, except for authorized law enforcement officers.


title: Walmart

text: Following the fatal police shooting of Walter Wallace Jr. in October 2020, Walmart temporarily removed gun and ammunition displays in thousands of stores across the U.S. from sales floors, grounding their reason in concerns of civil unrest. Company spokesman Kory Lundberg said in a statement that "We have seen some isolated civil unrest and as we have done on several occasions over the last few years, we have moved our firearms and ammunition off the sales floor as a precaution for the safety of our associates and customers." Firearms and ammunition will still be available for purchase on request, but the duration of the removal of both from the sales floor remains undetermined.


title: Walmart

text: Many Walmart technology projects are coded in the open and available through the Walmart Labs GitHub repository as open-source software under the OSI approved Apache V2.0 license. 141 public GitHub projects are listed.


title: Walmart

text: During a migration of the walmart.com retail platform to Facebook React and Node.js, the Electrode project was created to power the e-commerce platform which serves 80 million visitors per month and 15 million items.


title: Walmart

text: The electrode provides various developer enhancements and tools for the developer including Node.js configuration and feature management.


title: Walmart

text: Alex Grigoryan of Walmart Labs released a statement on Medium.com on October 3, 2016, explaining the details of the applications and the scale that they operate at Walmart.


title: Walmart

text: As the largest retailer in the U.S., Walmart collects and analyzes a large amount of consumer data. The big data sets are mined for use in predictive analytics, which allow the company to optimize operations by predicting customer's habits. Walmart's datacenter is unofficially referred to as Area 71.


title: Walmart

text: In April 2011, Walmart acquired Kosmix to develop software for analyzing real-time data streams. In August 2012, Walmart announced its Polaris search engine.


title: Walmart

text: in 2016, Walmart began a drive to automate much of the cash handling process. Walmart began replacing employees who count currency by hand with machines that count 8 bills per second and 3,000 coins a minute. The processing machines, located in the back of stores, allow cashiers to process the money for electronic depositing.


title: Walmart

text: Sam Walton believed that the company's contribution to society was the fact that it operated efficiently, thereby lowering the cost of living for customers, and, therefore, in that sense was a "powerful force for good", despite his refusal to contribute cash to philanthropic causes. Having begun to feel that his wealth attracted people who wanted nothing more than a "handout", he explained that while he believed his family had been fortunate and wished to use his wealth to aid worthy causes like education, they could not be expected to "solve every personal problem that comes to [their] attention". He explained later in his autobiography, "We feel very strongly that Wal-Mart really is "not", and "should not" be, in the charity business," stating "any debit has to be passed along to somebody—either shareholders or our customers." Since Sam Walton's death in 1992, however, Walmart and the Walmart Foundation dramatically increased charitable giving. For example, in 2005, Walmart donated in cash and merchandise for Hurricane Katrina relief and in 2020 they committed $25 million to organizations on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic response. Today, Walmart's charitable donations approach each year.


title: Walmart

text: As of January 2021, healthcare workers could get vaccines through Walmart in New Mexico and Arkansas. Walmart planned to offer vaccines in Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, New Jersey, South Carolina, Texas, Chicago and Puerto Rico with the target of delivering between 10 million and 13 million doses per month at full capacity.


title: Walmart

text: In May 2021, Walmart said that starting from May 18 all its fully vaccinated employees can stop wearing masks at work following the guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.


title: Walmart

text: A 2005 story in "The Washington Post" reported that "Wal-Mart's discounting on food alone boosts the welfare of American shoppers by at least per year." A study in 2005 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) measured the effect on consumer welfare and found that the poorest segment of the population benefits the most from the existence of discount retailers.


title: Walmart

text: In 2006, American newspaper columnist George Will stated that In terms of economic effects, "Wal-Mart and its effects save shoppers more than a year, dwarfing such government programs as food stamps () and the earned income tax credit ()".


title: Walmart

text: Kenneth Stone, Professor of Economics at Iowa State University, in a paper published in "Farm Foundation" (1997), found that some small towns can lose almost half of their retail trade within ten years of a Walmart store opening. Presumably, people who previously shopped in towns without Wal-Mart stores choose to shop in towns with Wal-Mart stores, part of an older pattern in which smaller centers lose retail sales to larger ones. Stone compared the changes to previous competitors that small town shops have faced in the past, such as the development of the railroads, the Sears Roebuck catalog, and shopping malls. He concluded that small towns are more affected by "discount mass merchandiser stores" than larger towns and that shop owners who adapt to the ever-changing retail market can "co-exist and even thrive in this type of environment." In later research Artz and Stone (2006) reported that in MIssissippi the impact of opening a Walmart was much larger on existing retailers in rural communities (17%) than more urban ones (4%). This also suggests that Walmart has achieved its strongest growth in non-metropolitan areas, which tend to be low-income.


title: Walmart

text: Studies of the impact of Walmart tend to focus on Supercenters rather than Neighborhood Markets. Comparisons of performance metrics such as sales per square foot suggest that supermarkets and other high-volume retailers in direct competition with Walmart Supercenters show significant decreases in profit margins. While Walmart has often been said to be a destroyer of small businesses, much of this is anecdotal. Research so far suggests that Walmart superstores have little effect on smaller retailers such as "Mom and Pop" businesses. A 2008 economic analysis published in the journal "Economic Inquiry" suggested that "the process of creative destruction unleashed by Wal‐Mart has had no statistically significant long‐run impact on the overall size and profitability of the small business sector in the United States."


title: Walmart

text: Impact appears to be related to a number of factors, with a key factor being the goods offered for sale. A study by Ailawadi and others (2010) examined the impact of new Walmarts in detail. She reported that median sales dropped 40 percent at similar high-volume stores, 17 percent at supermarkets and 6 percent at drugstores. However, 30 percent of specific product categories at high-volume stores were unaffected. Many retailers reduced prices and cut product selection in an attempt to compete directly with Walmart, in effect attacking its areas of strength. A more successful approach was to track sales, identify vulnerable categories, and increase the range of products in those categories. By including products at both top and bottom price points, and offering temporary promotions on those items, retailers could attract both customers who were price-conscious and those interested in a wider range of options. A small store that specialized in a particular product area could compete effectively against Walmart. Small specialized stores are less effective against big-box category killer chains such as Home Depot and Best Buy electronics.


title: Walmart

text: Some studies have suggested that the impact a Walmart store has on a local business is correlated to its distance from the store. David Merriman, Joseph Persky, Julie Davis and Ron Baiman (2012) outlined the impacts of Walmart in Chicago. Based on three annual surveys of enterprises within a four-mile radius of a new Chicago Walmart it "shows that the probability of going out of business was significantly higher for establishments close to that store". The overall findings of this study reinforce the "contention that large-city Walmarts, like those in small towns, absorb retail sales from nearby stores without significantly expanding the market". Ellickson & Grieco (2013) report in the "Journal of Urban Economics" that Wal-Marts most strongly affect outlets of larger chains that are within of their location.


title: Walmart

text: A 2022 literature review concludes that "there is no consensus on the impact of Walmart on local employment, but most studies on the topic point to a modest increase in retail employment". For example. studies at the University of Missouri found that a new store increases net retail employment in the county by 100 jobs in the short term, half of which disappear over five years as other retail establishments close. Similarly, a net increase in employment (55 jobs) was found in a study of West Virginia counties between 1989 and 1998.


title: Walmart

text: Like other chain stores, Walmart tends to hire local employees for low-skilled jobs with low wages and minimal benefits. This may increase employees’ reliance on public assistance programs, effectively transferring costs away from employers onto taxpayers. Studies examining aggregate retail wage data from states and counties, before and after the arrival of Walmart, are mixed. Some results, particularly from nonmetropolitan areas in the South and central United States, suggest lowered wages. Other studies have found no effect (e.g. Pennsylvania) or an increase in wages (e,g, Maryland). A 2004 paper by Goetz and Swaminathan suggested that U.S. counties with Walmart stores suffered increased poverty compared with counties without Wal-Marts. It is difficult to distinguish the effects of opening a Walmart from other factors that occur in the same time and place, some of which may be related to the decision to open a store. Known as endogeneity bias, this makes it difficult to determine whether Walmart chooses to establish itself in communities with greater poverty and joblessness, or creates more poverty and joblessness.


title: Walmart

text: Studies of socioeconomic well-being, civic participation, and community welfare suggest that large non-locally owned businesses tend to be centralized and vertically integrated, rely on remote sources and support services, and move money, expertise and power away from local communities. Large externally-oriented businesses tend to be associated with lower local standards of living, greater inequality, and less social and civic participation. In contrast, locally-oriented businesses are associated with higher rates of church membership, community engagement, civic improvement and recreation. They may also be associated with higher rates of home-ownership and expenditures on health and public schools. The presence of local entrepreneurs with resources and motivation to invest in local communities may be key to addressing community problems. This research is not specific to Walmart, but to large businesses in general.


title: Walmart

text: In broader economic terms, the Economic Policy Institute estimated that between 2001 and 2006 Wal-Mart's trade deficit with China alone represented a loss of nearly 200,000 U.S. jobs. During this period, Wal-Mart was responsible for 9.3% of total U.S. imports from China, increasing the U.S. trade deficit by an estimated $17.1 billion. This represents about 200,000 jobs, most of them in the manufacturing sector (133,000).


title: Walmart

text: A 2014 story in "The Guardian" reported that the Wal-Mart Foundation was boosting its efforts to work with U.S. manufacturers. In February 2014, the Walmart Foundation pledged to support domestic manufacturers by buying worth of American-made products in the next decade. Between 2014 and 2017, the Walmart U.S. Manufacturing Innovation Fund gave $10 million in grants to research and academic institutions for projects that improve domestic manufacturing. For the 2020 fiscal year, Walmart reported that nearly two-thirds of its merchandise was made, assembled or grown in the United States. As of March 2021, Walmart pledged to buy an additional $350 billion worth of American-based items over the next decade.


title: Walmart

text: A 2001 McKinsey Global Institute study of U.S. labor productivity growth between 1995 and 2000 concluded that "Wal-Mart directly and indirectly caused the bulk of the productivity acceleration" in general merchandise, representing 16 percent of total productivity growth in the retail sector.


title: Walmart

text: Walmart's transformative use of information technology, particularly in supply-chain management, is identified as a major reason for its impact on productivity per man hour. For every dollar spent by Walmart to improve its own technology, an estimated ten dollars has been invested by suppliers throughout its supply chain on their own systems and software. Economist Robert Solow has emphasized the importance of imitation and adaptation, as well as innovation. In addition to improving its own efficiency, Walmart's innovations have been adopted by its competitors so that they can compete.


title: Walmart

text: With over 2.3 million employees worldwide, Walmart has faced a torrent of lawsuits and issues with regards to its workforce. These issues involve low wages, poor working conditions, inadequate health care, and issues involving the company's strong anti-union policies. In November 2013, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced that it had found that in 13 U.S. states, Wal-Mart had pressured employees not to engage in strikes on Black Friday, and had illegally disciplined workers who had engaged in strikes. Critics point to Walmart's high turnover rate as evidence of an unhappy workforce, although other factors may be involved. Approximately 70 percent of its employees leave within the first year. Despite this turnover rate, the company is still able to affect unemployment rates. This was found in a study by Oklahoma State University which states, "Walmart is found to have substantially lowered the relative unemployment rates of blacks in those counties where it is present, but to have had only a limited impact on relative incomes after the influences of other socio-economic variables were taken into account."


title: Walmart

text: Walmart is the largest private employer in the United States, with 1.6 million employees as of 2020. Walmart employs almost five times as many people as IBM, the second-largest employer. Walmart employs more African Americans than any other private employer in the United States.


title: Walmart

text: While 4.6% of all retail workers, and 16.5% of all US grocery workers, were unionized as of 2020, Walmart does not employ unionized labor and actively discourages unionization and collective bargaining.


title: Walmart

text: Walmart rebranded their Associate Education Benefits to Live Better U in March 2019. Live Better U supports associate education at every level and includes $1 a day college program, cost-free high school education, and discounts on higher education programs through partnership with Guild Education.


title: Walmart

text: In April 2019, Walmart Inc. announced plans to extend the use of robots in stores in order to improve and monitor inventory, clean floors and unload trucks, part of the company's effort to lower its labor costs.


title: Walmart

text: In June 2019, Walmart Inc. announced the expansion of education benefits to recruit high school students. The incentives include flexible work schedules, free SAT and ACT preparation courses, up to seven hours of free college credit, and a debt-free college degree in three fields from six nonprofit universities.


title: Walmart

text: In 2007, a gender discrimination lawsuit, "Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.", was filed against Walmart, alleging that female employees were discriminated against in matters regarding pay and promotions. A class action suit was sought, which would have been the nation's largest in history, covering 1.5 million past and current employees. On June 20, 2011, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Wal-Mart's favor, stating that the plaintiffs did not have enough in common to constitute a class. The court ruled unanimously that because of the variability of the plaintiffs' circumstances, the class action could not proceed as presented, and furthermore, in a 5–4 decision that it could not proceed as any kind of class action suit. Several plaintiffs, including the lead plaintiff, Betty Dukes, expressed their intent to file individual discrimination lawsuits separately. Dukes died in 2017. In 2020, Walmart agreed to pay $20 million, stop using a pre-employment test, and furnish other relief to settle a companywide, sex-based hiring discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).


title: Walmart

text: According to a consultant hired by plaintiffs in a sex discrimination lawsuit, in 2001, Wal-Mart's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filings showed that female employees made up 65 percent of Wal-Mart's hourly paid workforce, but only 33 percent of its management. Just 35 percent of its store managers were women, compared to 57 percent at similar retailers. Wal-Mart says comparisons with other retailers are unfair, because it classifies employees differently; if department managers were included in the totals, women would make up 60 percent of the managerial ranks.


title: Walmart

text: In the Human Rights Campaign's (HRC) 2002 Corporate Equality Index, a measure of how companies treat LGBT employees and customers, gave Wal-Mart Stores Inc. a score of 14%. By 2017, however, HRC's 2017 Corporate Equality Index gave Wal-Mart Stores Inc. a score of a 100%. In 2003, Walmart added sexual orientation to their anti-discrimination policy. In 2005, Walmart's definition of family began including same-sex partners. In 2006, Walmart announced that "diversity efforts include new groups of minority, female and gay employees that meet at Walmart headquarters in Bentonville to advise the company on marketing and internal promotion. There are seven business resource groups: women, African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, gays and lesbians, and a disabled group." From 2006 to 2008, Walmart was a member of the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. In 2011, Walmart added gender identity to their anti-discrimination policy. Walmart's anti-discrimination policies allow associates to use restroom facilities that corresponds with their gender identity and gender expression. In 2013, Walmart began offering health insurance benefits to domestic partners. In 2015, Doug McMillon, CEO of Walmart, issued a statement opposing House Bill 1228 and asked Governor Asa Hutchinson to veto the bill. In 2016, Walmart added full healthcare benefits to its transgender employees.


title: Walmart

text: Walmart has been subject to criticism from various groups and individuals, including labor unions, community groups, grassroots organizations, religious organizations, environmental groups, firearm groups, and the company's own customers and employees. They have protested against the company's policies and business practices, including charges of racial and gender discrimination. Other areas of criticism include the company's foreign product sourcing, treatment of suppliers, employee compensation and working conditions, environmental practices, the use of public subsidies, the company's security policies, and slavery. Walmart denies doing anything wrong and maintains that low prices are the result of efficiency.


title: Walmart

text: In April 2016, Walmart announced that it plans to eliminate eggs from battery cages from its supply chain by 2025. The decision was particularly important because of Walmart's large market share and influence on the rest of the industry. The move was praised by major animal welfare groups but a poultry trade group representative expressed skepticism about the decision's impact. Walmart's cage-free eggs will not come from free range producers, but rather industrial-scale farms where the birds will be allotted between 1 and 1.5 square feet each, a stressful arrangement which can cause cannibalism. Unlike battery cages, the systems of Walmart's suppliers allow the hens to move around, but relative to battery cages they have higher hen mortality rates and present distinct environmental and worker health problems.


title: Walmart

text: In March 2018, Walmart was sued by former Director of Business Development Tri Huynh for claims of reporting misleading e-commerce performance results in favor of the company. Huynh stated the company's move was an attempt to regain lost ground to competitor Amazon.


title: Walmart

text: In September 2018, Walmart was sued by Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging that Walmart denied requests from pregnant employees to limit heavy lifting.


title: Walmart

text: In May 2019, the Center for Inquiry filed a lawsuit in the District of Columbia alleging consumer fraud and the endangering of its customers' health due to Walmart's practice of "selling homeopathic [products] alongside real medicine, in the same sections in its stores, under the same signs," according to Nicholas Little, CFI's vice president and general counsel. On May 20, 2020, District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Florence Pan dismissed CFI's lawsuit, claiming that CFI had no standing as a consumer protection organization and failed to identify the specific actions on the part of Walmart that lead to harm to consumers. CFI has challenged both of those arguments and is planning an appeal.


title: Walmart

text: In July 2019, the Walmart subreddit was flooded with pro-union memes in a protest to the firing of an employee who posted confidential material to the subreddit. Many of these posts were angry with Walmart surveying its staff on the Internet. The posting of the union content is in response to the aforementioned alleged anti-union position Walmart has taken in the past.


title: Walmart

text: In November 2021, a federal jury found that Walmart, along with Walgreens and CVS, "had substantially contributed to" the opioid crisis. The damages between the three chains in this suit totalled $650 million. Damages claimed by the lawyers for Lake County and Trumbull County in Ohio were $3.3 billion. Two other chains, Rite Aid and Giant Eagle, settled with these counties for undisclosed sums before going to trial.


title: Walmart

text: In June 2022, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued Walmart, alleging that the company facilitated money transfer fraud. The FTC claimed that Walmart allowed its money transfer services to be used by scammers who stole hundreds of millions of dollars from customers.


title: Walmart

text: According to an August 2016 report by "Bloomberg Businessweek", aggressive cost-cutting decisions that began in 2000 when Lee Scott took over as CEO of the company led to a significant increase in crime in stores across the United States. These included the removal of the store's famed greeters, who are in part seen as a theft deterrent at exits, the replacement of many cashiers with self-checkout stations, and the addition of stores at a rate that exceeded the hiring of new employees, which led to a 19% increase in space per employee from a decade previous. While these decisions succeeded in increasing profits 23% in the decade that followed, they also led to an increase in both theft and violent crime.


title: Walmart

text: In 2015, under CEO Doug McMillon, Walmart began a company-wide campaign to reduce crime that included spot-checking receipts at exits, stationing employees at self-checkout areas, eye-level security cameras in high-theft areas, use of data analytics to detect credit fraud, hiring off-duty police and private security officers, and reducing calls to police with a program by which first-time offenders caught stealing merchandise below a certain value can avoid arrest if they agree to go through a theft-prevention program.


title: Walmart

text: Law enforcement agencies across the United States have noted a burden on resources created by a disproportionate number of calls from Walmart. Experts have criticized the retailer for shifting its security burden onto the taxpayers. Across three Florida counties, approximately 9,000 police calls were logged to 53 Walmart stores but resulted in only a few hundred arrests. In Granite Falls, North Carolina, 92% of larceny calls to local police were from the Walmart store there. The trend is similar in rural, suburban, and urban areas. Police are called to Walmart stores 3 to 4 times as much as similar retailers such as Target. Experts say the chain and its razor-thin profit margins rely heavily on police to protect its bottom line. Walmart Supercenters top the list of those most visited by police.


title: Walmart

text: The police captain in Port Richey, Florida, said that Target stores more often have uniformed security, as well as more visible staff in any case. Another comparison might be shopping malls which often have security patrols and off-duty police officers. J.R. Roberts, a former director for risk management at Valor Security Services (which provides mall security) says: "Shopping centers all have security; they know it's an expense, but one they know pays dividends because people feel safer going to their stores."


title: Walmart

text: In addition to hundreds of thousands of petty crimes, more than 200 violent crimes, including attempted kidnappings, stabbings, shootings, and murders occurred at the 4,500 Walmarts in the U.S. in 2016. In 2019, 23 people were killed in a mass shooting at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas.


title: Walmart

text: On June 27, 2020, a shooting occurred at a Walmart distribution center in Red Bluff, California, United States. One employee was killed, four other employees were wounded, and the shooter was killed by officers.


title: Walmart

text: In April 2022, Walmart decided to take service dog paraphernalia out of stores and online, following an online petition to have them stop selling service dog vests.


title: Alaska

text: Alaska ( ; ; ; ; ; Yup'ik: "Alaskaq"; ) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S., it borders the Canadian province of British Columbia and the Yukon territory to the east; it also shares a maritime border with the Russian Federation's Chukotka Autonomous Okrug to the west, just across the Bering Strait. To the north are the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas of the Arctic Ocean, while the Pacific Ocean lies to the south and southwest.


title: Alaska

text: Alaska is by far the largest U.S. state by area, comprising more total area than the next three largest states (Texas, California, and Montana) combined. It represents the seventh-largest subnational division in the world. It is the third-least populous and the most sparsely populated state, but by far the continent's most populous territory located mostly north of the 60th parallel, with a population of 736,081 as of 2020—more than quadruple the combined populations of Northern Canada and Greenland. Approximately half of Alaska's residents live within the Anchorage metropolitan area. The state capital of Juneau is the second-largest city in the United States by area, and the former capital of Alaska, Sitka, is the largest U.S. city by area.


title: Alaska

text: What is now Alaska has been home to various indigenous peoples for thousands of years; it is widely believed that the region served as the entry point for the initial settlement of North America by way of the Bering land bridge. The Russian Empire was the first to actively colonize the area beginning in the 18th century, eventually establishing Russian America, which spanned most of the current state. The expense and logistical difficulty of maintaining this distant possession prompted its sale to the U.S. in 1867 for US$7.2 million (equivalent to $ million in ), or approximately two cents per acre ($4.74/km). The area went through several administrative changes before becoming organized as a territory on May 11, 1912. It was admitted as the 49th state of the U.S. on January 3, 1959.


title: Alaska

text: While it has one of the smallest state economies in the country, Alaska's per capita income is among the highest, owing to a diversified economy dominated by fishing, natural gas, and oil, all of which it has in abundance. U.S. Armed Forces bases and tourism are also a significant part of the economy; more than half the state is federally owned public land, including a multitude of national forests, national parks, and wildlife refuges.


title: Alaska

text: The indigenous population of Alaska is proportionally the highest of any U.S. state, at over 15 percent. Close to two dozen native languages are spoken, and Alaskan Natives exercise considerable influence in local and state politics.


title: Alaska

text: The name "Alaska" () was introduced in the Russian colonial period when it was used to refer to the Alaska Peninsula. It was derived from an Aleut-language idiom, , meaning "the mainland" or, more literally, "the object towards which the action of the sea is directed". It is also known as , the "great land", an Aleut word that was derived from the same root.


title: Alaska

text: Numerous indigenous peoples occupied Alaska for thousands of years before the arrival of European peoples to the area. Linguistic and DNA studies done here have provided evidence for the settlement of North America by way of the Bering land bridge. At the Upward Sun River site in the Tanana Valley in Alaska, remains of a six-week-old infant were found. The baby's DNA showed that she belonged to a population that was genetically separate from other native groups present elsewhere in the New World at the end of the Pleistocene. Ben Potter, the University of Alaska Fairbanks archaeologist who unearthed the remains at the Upward Sun River site in 2013, named this new group Ancient Beringians.


title: Alaska

text: The Tlingit people developed a society with a matrilineal kinship system of property inheritance and descent in what is today Southeast Alaska, along with parts of British Columbia and the Yukon. Also in Southeast were the Haida, now well known for their unique arts. The Tsimshian people came to Alaska from British Columbia in 1887, when President Grover Cleveland, and later the U.S. Congress, granted them permission to settle on Annette Island and found the town of Metlakatla. All three of these peoples, as well as other indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, experienced smallpox outbreaks from the late 18th through the mid-19th century, with the most devastating epidemics occurring in the 1830s and 1860s, resulting in high fatalities and social disruption.


title: Alaska

text: The Aleutian Islands are still home to the Aleut people's seafaring society, although they were the first Native Alaskans to be exploited by the Russians. Western and Southwestern Alaska are home to the Yup'ik, while their cousins the Alutiiq ~ Sugpiaq live in what is now Southcentral Alaska. The Gwich'in people of the northern Interior region are Athabaskan and primarily known today for their dependence on the caribou within the much-contested Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The North Slope and Little Diomede Island are occupied by the widespread Inupiat people.


title: Alaska

text: Some researchers believe the first Russian settlement in Alaska was established in the 17th century. According to this hypothesis, in 1648 several koches of Semyon Dezhnyov's expedition came ashore in Alaska by storm and founded this settlement. This hypothesis is based on the testimony of Chukchi geographer Nikolai Daurkin, who had visited Alaska in 1764–1765 and who had reported on a village on the Kheuveren River, populated by "bearded men" who "pray to the icons". Some modern researchers associate Kheuveren with Koyuk River.


title: Alaska

text: The first European vessel to reach Alaska is generally held to be the "St. Gabriel" under the authority of the surveyor M. S. Gvozdev and assistant navigator I. Fyodorov on August 21, 1732, during an expedition of Siberian Cossack A. F. Shestakov and Russian explorer Dmitry Pavlutsky (1729–1735). Another European contact with Alaska occurred in 1741, when Vitus Bering led an expedition for the Russian Navy aboard the "St. Peter". After his crew returned to Russia with sea otter pelts judged to be the finest fur in the world, small associations of fur traders began to sail from the shores of Siberia toward the Aleutian Islands. The first permanent European settlement was founded in 1784.


title: Alaska

text: Between 1774 and 1800, Spain sent several expeditions to Alaska to assert its claim over the Pacific Northwest. In 1789, a Spanish settlement and fort were built in Nootka Sound. These expeditions gave names to places such as Valdez, Bucareli Sound, and Cordova. Later, the Russian-American Company carried out an expanded colonization program during the early-to-mid-19th century. Sitka, renamed New Archangel from 1804 to 1867, on Baranof Island in the Alexander Archipelago in what is now Southeast Alaska, became the capital of Russian America. It remained the capital after the colony was transferred to the United States. The Russians never fully colonized Alaska, and the colony was never very profitable. Evidence of Russian settlement in names and churches survive throughout southeastern Alaska.


title: Alaska

text: William H. Seward, the 24th United States Secretary of State, negotiated the Alaska Purchase (also known as Seward's Folly) with the Russians in 1867 for $7.2 million. Russia's contemporary ruler Tsar Alexander II, the Emperor of the Russian Empire, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland, also planned the sale; the purchase was made on March 30, 1867. Six months later the commissioners arrived in Sitka and the formal transfer was arranged; the formal flag-raising took place at Fort Sitka on October 18, 1867. In the ceremony 250 uniformed U.S. soldiers marched to the governor's house at "Castle Hill", where the Russian troops lowered the Russian flag and the U.S. flag was raised. This event is celebrated as Alaska Day, a legal holiday on October 18.


title: Alaska

text: Alaska was loosely governed by the military initially, and was administered as a district starting in 1884, with a governor appointed by the United States president. A federal district court was headquartered in Sitka. For most of Alaska's first decade under the United States flag, Sitka was the only community inhabited by American settlers. They organized a "provisional city government", which was Alaska's first municipal government, but not in a legal sense. Legislation allowing Alaskan communities to legally incorporate as cities did not come about until 1900, and home rule for cities was extremely limited or unavailable until statehood took effect in 1959.


title: Alaska

text: Starting in the 1890s and stretching in some places to the early 1910s, gold rushes in Alaska and the nearby Yukon Territory brought thousands of miners and settlers to Alaska. Alaska was officially incorporated as an organized territory in 1912. Alaska's capital, which had been in Sitka until 1906, was moved north to Juneau. Construction of the Alaska Governor's Mansion began that same year. European immigrants from Norway and Sweden also settled in southeast Alaska, where they entered the fishing and logging industries.


title: Alaska

text: During World War II, the Aleutian Islands Campaign focused on Attu, Agattu and Kiska, all of which were occupied by the Empire of Japan. During the Japanese occupation, a white American civilian and two United States Navy personnel were killed at Attu and Kiska respectively, and nearly a total of 50 Aleut civilians and eight sailors were interned in Japan. About half of the Aleuts died during the period of internment. Unalaska/Dutch Harbor and Adak became significant bases for the United States Army, United States Army Air Forces and United States Navy. The United States Lend-Lease program involved flying American warplanes through Canada to Fairbanks and then Nome; Soviet pilots took possession of these aircraft, ferrying them to fight the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The construction of military bases contributed to the population growth of some Alaskan cities.


title: Alaska

text: Statehood for Alaska was an important cause of James Wickersham early in his tenure as a congressional delegate. Decades later, the statehood movement gained its first real momentum following a territorial referendum in 1946. The Alaska Statehood Committee and Alaska's Constitutional Convention would soon follow. Statehood supporters also found themselves fighting major battles against political foes, mostly in the U.S. Congress but also within Alaska. Statehood was approved by the U.S. Congress on July 7, 1958; Alaska was officially proclaimed a state on January 3, 1959.


title: Alaska

text: On March 27, 1964, the massive Good Friday earthquake killed 133 people and destroyed several villages and portions of large coastal communities, mainly by the resultant tsunamis and landslides. It was the second-most-powerful earthquake in recorded history, with a moment magnitude of 9.2 (more than a thousand times as powerful as the 1989 San Francisco earthquake). The time of day (5:36 pm), time of year (spring) and location of the epicenter were all cited as factors in potentially sparing thousands of lives, particularly in Anchorage.


title: Alaska

text: Lasting four minutes and thirty-eight seconds, the magnitude 9.2 megathrust earthquake remains the most powerful earthquake recorded in North American history, and the second most powerful earthquake recorded in world history. of fault ruptured at once and moved up to , releasing about 500 years of stress buildup. Soil liquefaction, fissures, landslides, and other ground failures caused major structural damage in several communities and much damage to property. Anchorage sustained great destruction or damage to many inadequately earthquake-engineered houses, buildings, and infrastructure (paved streets, sidewalks, water and sewer mains, electrical systems, and other man-made equipment), particularly in the several landslide zones along Knik Arm. southwest, some areas near Kodiak were permanently raised by . Southeast of Anchorage, areas around the head of Turnagain Arm near Girdwood and Portage dropped as much as , requiring reconstruction and fill to raise the Seward Highway above the new high tide mark.


title: Alaska

text: In Prince William Sound, Port Valdez suffered a massive underwater landslide, resulting in the deaths of 32 people between the collapse of the Valdez city harbor and docks, and inside the ship that was docked there at the time. Nearby, a tsunami destroyed the village of Chenega, killing 23 of the 68 people who lived there; survivors out-ran the wave, climbing to high ground. Post-quake tsunamis severely affected Whittier, Seward, Kodiak, and other Alaskan communities, as well as people and property in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California. Tsunamis also caused damage in Hawaii and Japan. Evidence of motion directly related to the earthquake was also reported from Florida and Texas.


title: Alaska

text: The 1968 discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay and the 1977 completion of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System led to an oil boom. Royalty revenues from oil have funded large state budgets from 1980 onward.


title: Alaska

text: In 1989, the "Exxon Valdez" hit a reef in the Prince William Sound, spilling more than of crude oil over of coastline. Today, the battle between philosophies of development and conservation is seen in the contentious debate over oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the proposed Pebble Mine.


title: Alaska

text: Located at the northwest corner of North America, Alaska is the northernmost and westernmost state in the United States, but also has the most easterly longitude in the United States because the Aleutian Islands extend into the Eastern Hemisphere. Alaska is the only non-contiguous U.S. state on continental North America; about of British Columbia (Canada) separates Alaska from Washington. It is technically part of the continental U.S., but is sometimes not included in colloquial use; Alaska is not part of the contiguous U.S., often called "the Lower 48". The capital city, Juneau, is situated on the mainland of the North American continent but is not connected by road to the rest of the North American highway system.


title: Alaska

text: The state is bordered by Canada's Yukon and British Columbia to the east (making it the only state to only border a Canadian territory); the Gulf of Alaska and the Pacific Ocean to the south and southwest; the Bering Sea, Bering Strait, and Chukchi Sea to the west; and the Arctic Ocean to the north. Alaska's territorial waters touch Russia's territorial waters in the Bering Strait, as the Russian Big Diomede Island and Alaskan Little Diomede Island are only apart. Alaska has a longer coastline than all the other U.S. states combined.


title: Alaska

text: At in total area, Alaska is by far the largest state in the United States. Alaska is more than twice the size of the second-largest U.S. state (Texas), and it is larger than the next three largest states (Texas, California, and Montana) combined. Alaska is the seventh largest subnational division in the world, and if it was an independent nation would be the 16th largest country in the world, as it is larger than Iran.


title: Alaska

text: With its myriad islands, Alaska has nearly of tidal shoreline. The Aleutian Islands chain extends west from the southern tip of the Alaska Peninsula. Many active volcanoes are found in the Aleutians and in coastal regions. Unimak Island, for example, is home to Mount Shishaldin, which is an occasionally smoldering volcano that rises to above the North Pacific. The chain of volcanoes extends to Mount Spurr, west of Anchorage on the mainland. Geologists have identified Alaska as part of Wrangellia, a large region consisting of multiple states and Canadian provinces in the Pacific Northwest, which is actively undergoing continent building.


title: Alaska

text: One of the world's largest tides occurs in Turnagain Arm, just south of Anchorage, where tidal differences can be more than .


title: Alaska

text: Alaska has more than three million lakes. Marshlands and wetland permafrost cover (mostly in northern, western and southwest flatlands). Glacier ice covers about of Alaska. The Bering Glacier is the largest glacier in North America, covering alone.


title: Alaska

text: There are no officially defined borders demarcating the various regions of Alaska, but there are six widely accepted regions:


title: Alaska

text: The most populous region of Alaska, containing Anchorage, the Matanuska-Susitna Valley and the Kenai Peninsula. Rural, mostly unpopulated areas south of the Alaska Range and west of the Wrangell Mountains also fall within the definition of South Central, as do the Prince William Sound area and the communities of Cordova and Valdez.


title: Alaska

text: Also referred to as the Panhandle or Inside Passage, this is the region of Alaska closest to the contiguous states. As such, this was where most of the initial non-indigenous settlement occurred in the years following the Alaska Purchase. The region is dominated by the Alexander Archipelago as well as the Tongass National Forest, the largest national forest in the United States. It contains the state capital Juneau, the former capital Sitka, and Ketchikan, at one time Alaska's largest city. The Alaska Marine Highway provides a vital surface transportation link throughout the area and country, as only three communities (Haines, Hyder and Skagway) enjoy direct connections to the contiguous North American road system.


title: Alaska

text: The Interior is the largest region of Alaska; much of it is uninhabited wilderness. Fairbanks is the only large city in the region. Denali National Park and Preserve is located here. Denali, formerly Mount McKinley, is the highest mountain in North America, and is also located here.


title: Alaska

text: Southwest Alaska is a sparsely inhabited region stretching some inland from the Bering Sea. Most of the population lives along the coast. Kodiak Island is also located in Southwest. The massive Yukon–Kuskokwim Delta, one of the largest river deltas in the world, is here. Portions of the Alaska Peninsula are considered part of Southwest, with the remaining portions included with the Aleutian Islands (see below).


title: Alaska

text: The North Slope is mostly tundra peppered with small villages. The area is known for its massive reserves of crude oil and contains both the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska and the Prudhoe Bay Oil Field. The city of Utqiaġvik, formerly known as Barrow, is the northernmost city in the United States and is located here. The Northwest Arctic area, anchored by Kotzebue and also containing the Kobuk River valley, is often regarded as being part of this region. However, the respective Inupiat of the North Slope and of the Northwest Arctic seldom consider themselves to be one people.


title: Alaska

text: More than 300 small volcanic islands make up this chain, which stretches more than into the Pacific Ocean. Some of these islands fall in the Eastern Hemisphere, but the International Date Line was drawn west of 180° to keep the whole state, and thus the entire North American continent, within the same legal day. Two of the islands, Attu and Kiska, were occupied by Japanese forces during World War II.


title: Alaska

text: According to an October 1998 report by the United States Bureau of Land Management, approximately 65% of Alaska is owned and managed by the U.S. federal government as public lands, including a multitude of national forests, national parks, and national wildlife refuges. Of these, the Bureau of Land Management manages , or 23.8% of the state. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. It is the world's largest wildlife refuge, comprising .


title: Alaska

text: Of the remaining land area, the state of Alaska owns , its entitlement under the Alaska Statehood Act. A portion of that acreage is occasionally ceded to the organized boroughs presented above, under the statutory provisions pertaining to newly formed boroughs. Smaller portions are set aside for rural subdivisions and other homesteading-related opportunities. These are not very popular due to the often remote and roadless locations. The University of Alaska, as a land grant university, also owns substantial acreage which it manages independently.


title: Alaska

text: Another are owned by 12 regional, and scores of local, Native corporations created under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) of 1971. Regional Native corporation Doyon, Limited often promotes itself as the largest private landowner in Alaska in advertisements and other communications. Provisions of ANCSA allowing the corporations' land holdings to be sold on the open market starting in 1991 were repealed before they could take effect. Effectively, the corporations hold title (including subsurface title in many cases, a privilege denied to individual Alaskans) but cannot sell the land. Individual Native allotments can be and are sold on the open market, however.


title: Alaska

text: Various private interests own the remaining land, totaling about one percent of the state. Alaska is, by a large margin, the state with the smallest percentage of private land ownership when Native corporation holdings are excluded.


title: Alaska

text: The Alaska Heritage Resources Survey (AHRS) is a restricted inventory of all reported historic and prehistoric sites within the U.S. state of Alaska; it is maintained by the Office of History and Archaeology. The survey's inventory of cultural resources includes objects, structures, buildings, sites, districts, and travel ways, with a general provision that they are more than fifty years old. , more than 35,000 sites have been reported.


title: Alaska

text: Alaska is not divided into counties, as most of the other U.S. states, but it is divided into "boroughs". Delegates to the Alaska Constitutional Convention wanted to avoid the pitfalls of the traditional county system and adopted their own unique model. Many of the more densely populated parts of the state are part of Alaska's 16 boroughs, which function somewhat similarly to counties in other states. However, unlike county-equivalents in the other 49 states, the boroughs do not cover the entire land area of the state. The area not part of any borough is referred to as the Unorganized Borough.


title: Alaska

text: The Unorganized Borough has no government of its own, but the U.S. Census Bureau in cooperation with the state divided the Unorganized Borough into 11 census areas solely for the purposes of statistical analysis and presentation. A "recording district" is a mechanism for management of the public record in Alaska. The state is divided into 34 recording districts which are centrally administered under a state recorder. All recording districts use the same acceptance criteria, fee schedule, etc., for accepting documents into the public record.


title: Alaska

text: Whereas many U.S. states use a three-tiered system of decentralization—state/county/township—most of Alaska uses only two tiers—state/borough. Owing to the low population density, most of the land is located in the Unorganized Borough. As the name implies, it has no intermediate borough government but is administered directly by the state government. In 2000, 57.71% of Alaska's area has this status, with 13.05% of the population.


title: Alaska

text: Anchorage merged the city government with the Greater Anchorage Area Borough in 1975 to form the Municipality of Anchorage, containing the city proper and the communities of Eagle River, Chugiak, Peters Creek, Girdwood, Bird, and Indian. Fairbanks has a separate borough (the Fairbanks North Star Borough) and municipality (the City of Fairbanks).


title: Alaska

text: The state's most populous city is Anchorage, home to 291,247 people in 2020. The richest location in Alaska by per capita income is Denali ($42,245). Yakutat City, Sitka, Juneau, and Anchorage are the four largest cities in the U.S. by area.


title: Alaska

text: As reflected in the 2020 United States census, Alaska has a total of 355 incorporated cities and census-designated places (CDPs). The tally of cities includes four unified municipalities, essentially the equivalent of a consolidated city–county. The majority of these communities are located in the rural expanse of Alaska known as "The Bush" and are unconnected to that contiguous North American road network. The table at the bottom of this section lists about the 100 largest cities and census-designated places in Alaska, in population order.


title: Alaska

text: Of Alaska's 2020 U.S. census population figure of 733,391, 16,655 people, or 2.27% of the population, did not live in an incorporated city or census-designated place. Approximately three-quarters of that figure were people who live in urban and suburban neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city limits of Ketchikan, Kodiak, Palmer and Wasilla. CDPs have not been established for these areas by the United States Census Bureau, except that seven CDPs were established for the Ketchikan-area neighborhoods in the 1980 Census (Clover Pass, Herring Cove, Ketchikan East, Mountain Point, North Tongass Highway, Pennock Island and Saxman East), but have not been used since. The remaining population was scattered throughout Alaska, both within organized boroughs and in the Unorganized Borough, in largely remote areas.


title: Alaska

text: The climate in south and southeastern Alaska is a mid-latitude oceanic climate (Köppen climate classification: "Cfb"), and a subarctic oceanic climate (Köppen "Cfc") in the northern parts. On an annual basis, the southeast is both the wettest and warmest part of Alaska with milder temperatures in the winter and high precipitation throughout the year. Juneau averages over of precipitation a year, and Ketchikan averages over . This is also the only region in Alaska in which the average daytime high temperature is above freezing during the winter months.The climate of Anchorage and south central Alaska is mild by Alaskan standards due to the region's proximity to the seacoast. While the area gets less rain than southeast Alaska, it gets more snow, and days tend to be clearer. On average, Anchorage receives of precipitation a year, with around of snow, although there are areas in the south central which receive far more snow. It is a subarctic climate () due to its brief, cool summers.


title: Alaska

text: The climate of western Alaska is determined in large part by the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska. It is a subarctic oceanic climate in the southwest and a continental subarctic climate farther north. The temperature is somewhat moderate considering how far north the area is. This region has a tremendous amount of variety in precipitation. An area stretching from the northern side of the Seward Peninsula to the Kobuk River valley (i.e., the region around Kotzebue Sound) is technically a desert, with portions receiving less than of precipitation annually. On the other extreme, some locations between Dillingham and Bethel average around of precipitation.


title: Alaska

text: The climate of the interior of Alaska is subarctic. Some of the highest and lowest temperatures in Alaska occur around the area near Fairbanks. The summers may have temperatures reaching into the 90s °F (the low-to-mid 30s °C), while in the winter, the temperature can fall below . Precipitation is sparse in the Interior, often less than a year, but what precipitation falls in the winter tends to stay the entire winter.


title: Alaska

text: The highest and lowest recorded temperatures in Alaska are both in the Interior. The highest is in Fort Yukon (which is just inside the arctic circle) on June 27, 1915, making Alaska tied with Hawaii as the state with the lowest high temperature in the United States. The lowest official Alaska temperature is in Prospect Creek on January 23, 1971, one degree above the lowest temperature recorded in continental North America (in Snag, Yukon, Canada).


title: Alaska

text: The climate in the extreme north of Alaska is Arctic () with long, very cold winters and short, cool summers. Even in July, the average low temperature in Utqiaġvik is . Precipitation is light in this part of Alaska, with many places averaging less than per year, mostly as snow which stays on the ground almost the entire year.


title: Alaska

text: The United States Census Bureau found in the 2020 United States census that the population of Alaska was 736,081 on April 1, 2020, a 3.6% increase since the 2010 United States census. According to the 2010 United States census, the U.S. state of Alaska had a population of 710,231, increasing from 626,932 at the 2000 U.S. census.


title: Alaska

text: In 2010, Alaska ranked as the 47th state by population, ahead of North Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming (and Washington, D.C.). Estimates show North Dakota ahead . Alaska is the least densely populated state, and one of the most sparsely populated areas in the world, at , with the next state, Wyoming, at . Alaska is by far the largest U.S. state by area, and the tenth wealthiest (per capita income). due to its population size, it is one of 14 U.S. states that still have only one telephone area code.


title: Alaska

text: The 2019 American Community Survey estimated 60.2% of the population was non-Hispanic white, 3.7% black or African American, 15.6% American Indian or Alaska Native, 6.5% Asian, 1.4% Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, 7.5% two or more races, and 7.3% Hispanic or Latin American of any race. At the survey estimates, 7.8% of the total population was foreign-born from 2015 to 2019. In 2015, 61.3% was non-Hispanic white, 3.4% black or African American, 13.3% American Indian or Alaska Native, 6.2% Asian, 0.9% Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, 0.3% some other race, and 7.7% multiracial. Hispanics and Latin Americans were 7% of the state population in 2015. From 2015 to 2019, the largest Hispanic and Latin American groups were Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Cuban Americans. The largest Asian groups living in the state were Filipinos, Korean Americans, and Japanese and Chinese Americans.


title: Alaska

text: The state was 66.7% white (64.1% non-Hispanic white), 14.8% American Indian and Alaska Native, 5.4% Asian, 3.3% black or African American, 1.0% Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, 1.6% from some other race, and 7.3% from two or more races in 2010. Hispanics or Latin Americans of any race made up 5.5% of the population in 2010. , 50.7% of Alaska's population younger than one year of age belonged to minority groups (i.e., did not have two parents of non-Hispanic white ancestry). In 1960, the United States Census Bureau reported Alaska's population as 77.2% white, 3% black, and 18.8% American Indian and Alaska Native.


title: Alaska

text: According to the 2011 American Community Survey, 83.4% of people over the age of five spoke only English at home. About 3.5% spoke Spanish at home, 2.2% spoke another Indo-European language, about 4.3% spoke an Asian language (including Tagalog), and about 5.3% spoke other languages at home. In 2019, the American Community Survey determined 83.7% spoke only English, and 16.3% spoke another language other than English. The most spoken European language after English was Spanish, spoken by approximately 4.0% of the state population. Collectively, Asian and Pacific Islander languages were spoken by 5.6% of Alaskans. Since 2010, a total of 5.2% of Alaskans speak one of the state's 20 indigenous languages, known locally as "native languages".


title: Alaska

text: The Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks claims that at least 20 Alaskan native languages exist and there are also some languages with different dialects. Most of Alaska's native languages belong to either the Eskimo–Aleut or Na-Dene language families; however, some languages are thought to be isolates (e.g. Haida) or have not yet been classified (e.g. Tsimshianic). nearly all of Alaska's native languages were classified as either threatened, shifting, moribund, nearly extinct, or dormant languages.


title: Alaska

text: In October 2014, the governor of Alaska signed a bill declaring the state's 20 indigenous languages to have official status. This bill gave them symbolic recognition as official languages, though they have not been adopted for official use within the government. The 20 languages that were included in the bill are:


title: Alaska

text: According to statistics collected by the Association of Religion Data Archives from 2010, about 34% of Alaska residents were members of religious congregations. Of the religious population, 100,960 people identified as evangelical Protestants; 50,866 as Roman Catholic; and 32,550 as mainline Protestants. Roughly 4% were Mormon, 0.5% Jewish, 0.5% Muslim, 1% Buddhist, 0.2% Baháʼí, and 0.5% Hindu. The largest religious denominations in Alaska was the Roman Catholic Church with 50,866 adherents; non-denominational Evangelicals with 38,070 adherents; The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with 32,170 adherents; and the Southern Baptist Convention with 19,891 adherents. Alaska has been identified, along with Washington and Oregon in the Pacific Northwest, as being the least religious states in the United States, in terms of church membership.


title: Alaska

text: The Pew Research Center in 2014 determined 62% of the adult population practiced Christianity. Protestantism was the largest Christian tradition, dominated by Evangelicalism. Mainline Protestants were the second largest Protestant Christian group, followed by predominantly African American churches. The Roman Catholic Church remained the largest single Christian tradition practiced in Alaska. Of the unaffiliated population, they made up the largest non-Christian religious affiliation. Atheists made up 5% of the population and the largest non-Christian religion was Buddhism. In 2020, the Public Religion Research Institute determined 57% of adults were Christian.


title: Alaska

text: In 1795, the first Russian Orthodox Church was established in Kodiak. Intermarriage with Alaskan Natives helped the Russian immigrants integrate into society. As a result, an increasing number of Russian Orthodox churches gradually became established within Alaska. Alaska also has the largest Quaker population (by percentage) of any state. In 2009, there were 6,000 Jews in Alaska (for whom observance of halakha may pose special problems). Alaskan Hindus often share venues and celebrations with members of other Asian religious communities, including Sikhs and Jains. In 2010, Alaskan Hindus established the Sri Ganesha Temple of Alaska, making it the first Hindu Temple in Alaska and the northernmost Hindu Temple in the world. There are an estimated 2,000–3,000 Hindus in Alaska. The vast majority of Hindus live in Anchorage or Fairbanks.


title: Alaska

text: Estimates for the number of Muslims in Alaska range from 2,000 to 5,000. The Islamic Community Center of Anchorage began efforts in the late 1990s to construct a mosque in Anchorage. They broke ground on a building in south Anchorage in 2010 and were nearing completion in late 2014. When completed, the mosque will be the first in the state and one of the northernmost mosques in the world. There's also a Baháʼí center.


title: Alaska

text: As of October 2022, Alaska had a total employment of 316,900. The number of employer establishments was 21,077.


title: Alaska

text: The 2018 gross state product was $55 billion, 48th in the U.S. Its per capita personal income for 2018 was $73,000, ranking 7th in the nation. According to a 2013 study by Phoenix Marketing International, Alaska had the fifth-largest number of millionaires per capita in the United States, with a ratio of 6.75 percent. The oil and gas industry dominates the Alaskan economy, with more than 80% of the state's revenues derived from petroleum extraction. Alaska's main export product (excluding oil and natural gas) is seafood, primarily salmon, cod, pollock and crab.


title: Alaska

text: Agriculture represents a very small fraction of the Alaskan economy. Agricultural production is primarily for consumption within the state and includes nursery stock, dairy products, vegetables, and livestock. Manufacturing is limited, with most foodstuffs and general goods imported from elsewhere.


title: Alaska

text: Employment is primarily in government and industries such as natural resource extraction, shipping, and transportation. Military bases are a significant component of the economy in the Fairbanks North Star, Anchorage and Kodiak Island boroughs, as well as Kodiak. Federal subsidies are also an important part of the economy, allowing the state to keep taxes low. Its industrial outputs are crude petroleum, natural gas, coal, gold, precious metals, zinc and other mining, seafood processing, timber and wood products. There is also a growing service and tourism sector. Tourists have contributed to the economy by supporting local lodging.


title: Alaska

text: Alaska has vast energy resources, although its oil reserves have been largely depleted. Major oil and gas reserves were found in the Alaska North Slope (ANS) and Cook Inlet basins, but according to the Energy Information Administration, by February 2014 Alaska had fallen to fourth place in the nation in crude oil production after Texas, North Dakota, and California. Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North Slope is still the second highest-yielding oil field in the United States, typically producing about , although by early 2014 North Dakota's Bakken Formation was producing over . Prudhoe Bay was the largest conventional oil field ever discovered in North America, but was much smaller than Canada's enormous Athabasca oil sands field, which by 2014 was producing about of unconventional oil, and had hundreds of years of producible reserves at that rate.


title: Alaska

text: The Trans-Alaska Pipeline can transport and pump up to of crude oil per day, more than any other crude oil pipeline in the United States. Additionally, substantial coal deposits are found in Alaska's bituminous, sub-bituminous, and lignite coal basins. The United States Geological Survey estimates that there are of undiscovered, technically recoverable gas from natural gas hydrates on the Alaskan North Slope. Alaska also offers some of the highest hydroelectric power potential in the country from its numerous rivers. Large swaths of the Alaskan coastline offer wind and geothermal energy potential as well.


title: Alaska

text: Alaska's economy depends heavily on increasingly expensive diesel fuel for heating, transportation, electric power and light. Although wind and hydroelectric power are abundant and underdeveloped, proposals for statewide energy systems (e.g. with special low-cost electric interties) were judged uneconomical (at the time of the report, 2001) due to low (less than 50¢/gal) fuel prices, long distances and low population. The cost of a gallon of gas in urban Alaska today is usually thirty to sixty cents higher than the national average; prices in rural areas are generally significantly higher but vary widely depending on transportation costs, seasonal usage peaks, nearby petroleum development infrastructure and many other factors.


title: Alaska

text: The Alaska Permanent Fund is a constitutionally authorized appropriation of oil revenues, established by voters in 1976 to manage a surplus in state petroleum revenues from oil, largely in anticipation of the then recently constructed Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. The fund was originally proposed by Governor Keith Miller on the eve of the 1969 Prudhoe Bay lease sale, out of fear that the legislature would spend the entire proceeds of the sale (which amounted to $900 million) at once. It was later championed by Governor Jay Hammond and Kenai state representative Hugh Malone. It has served as an attractive political prospect ever since, diverting revenues which would normally be deposited into the general fund.


title: Alaska

text: The Alaska Constitution was written so as to discourage dedicating state funds for a particular purpose. The Permanent Fund has become the rare exception to this, mostly due to the political climate of distrust existing during the time of its creation. From its initial principal of $734,000, the fund has grown to $50 billion as a result of oil royalties and capital investment programs. Most if not all the principal is invested conservatively outside Alaska. This has led to frequent calls by Alaskan politicians for the Fund to make investments within Alaska, though such a stance has never gained momentum.


title: Alaska

text: Starting in 1982, dividends from the fund's annual growth have been paid out each year to eligible Alaskans, ranging from an initial $1,000 in 1982 (equal to three years' payout, as the distribution of payments was held up in a lawsuit over the distribution scheme) to $3,269 in 2008 (which included a one-time $1,200 "Resource Rebate"). Every year, the state legislature takes out 8% from the earnings, puts 3% back into the principal for inflation proofing, and the remaining 5% is distributed to all qualifying Alaskans. To qualify for the Permanent Fund Dividend, one must have lived in the state for a minimum of 12 months, maintain constant residency subject to allowable absences, and not be subject to court judgments or criminal convictions which fall under various disqualifying classifications or may subject the payment amount to civil garnishment.


title: Alaska

text: The Permanent Fund is often considered to be one of the leading examples of a basic income policy in the world.


title: Alaska

text: The cost of goods in Alaska has long been higher than in the contiguous 48 states. Federal government employees, particularly United States Postal Service (USPS) workers and active-duty military members, receive a Cost of Living Allowance usually set at 25% of base pay because, while the cost of living has gone down, it is still one of the highest in the country.


title: Alaska

text: Rural Alaska suffers from extremely high prices for food and consumer goods compared to the rest of the country, due to the relatively limited transportation infrastructure.


title: Alaska

text: Due to the northern climate and short growing season, relatively little farming occurs in Alaska. Most farms are in either the Matanuska Valley, about northeast of Anchorage, or on the Kenai Peninsula, about southwest of Anchorage. The short 100-day growing season limits the crops that can be grown, but the long sunny summer days make for productive growing seasons. The primary crops are potatoes, carrots, lettuce, and cabbage.


title: Alaska

text: The Tanana Valley is another notable agricultural locus, especially the Delta Junction area, about southeast of Fairbanks, with a sizable concentration of farms growing agronomic crops; these farms mostly lie north and east of Fort Greely. This area was largely set aside and developed under a state program spearheaded by Hammond during his second term as governor. Delta-area crops consist predominantly of barley and hay. West of Fairbanks lies another concentration of small farms catering to restaurants, the hotel and tourist industry, and community-supported agriculture.


title: Alaska

text: Alaskan agriculture has experienced a surge in growth of market gardeners, small farms and farmers' markets in recent years, with the highest percentage increase (46%) in the nation in growth in farmers' markets in 2011, compared to 17% nationwide. The peony industry has also taken off, as the growing season allows farmers to harvest during a gap in supply elsewhere in the world, thereby filling a niche in the flower market.


title: Alaska

text: Alaska, with no counties, lacks county fairs. However, a small assortment of state and local fairs (with the Alaska State Fair in Palmer the largest), are held mostly in the late summer. The fairs are mostly located in communities with historic or current agricultural activity, and feature local farmers exhibiting produce in addition to more high-profile commercial activities such as carnival rides, concerts and food. "Alaska Grown" is used as an agricultural slogan.


title: Alaska

text: Alaska has an abundance of seafood, with the primary fisheries in the Bering Sea and the North Pacific. Seafood is one of the few food items that is often cheaper within the state than outside it. Many Alaskans take advantage of salmon seasons to harvest portions of their household diet while fishing for subsistence, as well as sport. This includes fish taken by hook, net or wheel.


title: Alaska

text: Hunting for subsistence, primarily caribou, moose, and Dall sheep is still common in the state, particularly in remote Bush communities. An example of a traditional native food is Akutaq, the Eskimo ice cream, which can consist of reindeer fat, seal oil, dried fish meat and local berries.


title: Alaska

text: Alaska's reindeer herding is concentrated on Seward Peninsula, where wild caribou can be prevented from mingling and migrating with the domesticated reindeer.


title: Alaska

text: Most food in Alaska is transported into the state from "Outside" (the other 49 US states), and shipping costs make food in the cities relatively expensive. In rural areas, subsistence hunting and gathering is an essential activity because imported food is prohibitively expensive. Although most small towns and villages in Alaska lie along the coastline, the cost of importing food to remote villages can be high, because of the terrain and difficult road conditions, which change dramatically, due to varying climate and precipitation changes. The cost of transport can reach as high as 50¢ per pound ($1.10/kg) or more in some remote areas, during the most difficult times, if these locations can be reached at all during such inclement weather and terrain conditions. The cost of delivering a of milk is about $3.50 in many villages where per capita income can be $20,000 or less. Fuel cost per gallon is routinely twenty to thirty cents higher than the contiguous United States average, with only Hawaii having higher prices.


title: Alaska

text: Some of Alaska's popular annual events are the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race from Anchorage to Nome, World Ice Art Championships in Fairbanks, the Blueberry Festival and Alaska Hummingbird Festival in Ketchikan, the Sitka Whale Fest, and the Stikine River Garnet Fest in Wrangell. The Stikine River attracts the largest springtime concentration of American bald eagles in the world.


title: Alaska

text: The Alaska Native Heritage Center celebrates the rich heritage of Alaska's 11 cultural groups. Their purpose is to encourage cross-cultural exchanges among all people and enhance self-esteem among Native people. The Alaska Native Arts Foundation promotes and markets Native art from all regions and cultures in the State, using the internet.


title: Alaska

text: Influences on music in Alaska include the traditional music of Alaska Natives as well as folk music brought by later immigrants from Russia and Europe. Prominent musicians from Alaska include singer Jewel, traditional Aleut flautist Mary Youngblood, folk singer-songwriter Libby Roderick, Christian music singer-songwriter Lincoln Brewster, metal/post hardcore band 36 Crazyfists and the groups Pamyua and Portugal. The Man.


title: Alaska

text: There are many established music festivals in Alaska, including the Alaska Folk Festival, the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival the Anchorage Folk Festival, the Athabascan Old-Time Fiddling Festival, the Sitka Jazz Festival, and the Sitka Summer Music Festival. The most prominent orchestra in Alaska is the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra, though the Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra and Juneau Symphony are also notable. The Anchorage Opera is currently the state's only professional opera company, though there are several volunteer and semi-professional organizations in the state as well.


title: Alaska

text: The official state song of Alaska is "Alaska's Flag", which was adopted in 1955; it celebrates the flag of Alaska.


title: Alaska

text: Alaska's first independent picture entirely made in Alaska was "The Chechahcos", produced by Alaskan businessman Austin E. Lathrop and filmed in and around Anchorage. Released in 1924 by the Alaska Moving Picture Corporation, it was the only film the company made.


title: Alaska

text: One of the most prominent movies filmed in Alaska is MGM's "Eskimo/Mala The Magnificent", starring Alaska Native Ray Mala. In 1932, an expedition set out from MGM's studios in Hollywood to Alaska to film what was then billed as "The Biggest Picture Ever Made". Upon arriving in Alaska, they set up "Camp Hollywood" in Northwest Alaska, where they lived during the duration of the filming. Louis B. Mayer spared no expense in spite of the remote location, going so far as to hire the chef from the Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood to prepare meals.


title: Alaska

text: When "Eskimo" premiered at the Astor Theatre in New York City, the studio received the largest amount of feedback in its history. "Eskimo" was critically acclaimed and released worldwide; as a result, Mala became an international movie star. "Eskimo" won the first Oscar for Best Film Editing at the Academy Awards, and showcased and preserved aspects of Inupiat culture on film.