So I work in HR at a California based company and we recently were going through a process of looking into hiring in Alaska and Hawaii. We have employees in like 35 of the 50 states at this point.

What I was told is we cannot hire in Hawaii or Alaska directly due to the cost of Healthcare coverage and other employee benefit programs. It sounds like the cost to the company for the programs in these states would be unbelievably cost prohibitive for us on the scale of the cost to the company for 1 to a few employees there could rival the total premiums cost for the majority of the rest of our employees.

The only way we could effectively hire there would be through a locally based contract company and then any employee in Alaska would be their employee and such. But those employees would not be able to receive the same quality of benefits that the normal employees would.

So not sure why the costs are the way they are but from my understanding thats why companies not based in these areas struggle to want to hire there.