Decline in working-age population a growing challenge for Alaska

(Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development photo)

By Larry Persily

Wrangell Sentinel

Though several industries in Alaska are shedding jobs, the ones that are hiring share a common problem: Not enough applicants.

“Our working-age population has had a pretty significant and consistent decline over the past decade,” said Dan Robinson, chief of research and analysis at the Alaska Department of Labor.

The working-age population (ages 15 to 64) dropped from 478,00 in 2015 to 449,200 in 2024, he reported at the Resource Development Council’s annual conference in Anchorage on Nov. 12.

He attributed the loss of working-age Alaskans to people aging out of the labor force, a declining birth rate, and more people leaving the state than moving north.

“Alaska has the biggest migration flows in the country,” Robinson said. That flow has been a negative since the early 2010s.

“We’re in our 12th year now of negative net migration.”

Wrangell suffered the sharpest drop in working-age population among Southeast communities at 29% between 2014 and 2024.

People move for family reasons, education, quality of life, better job prospects, cost of living — a multitude of factors.

“There is no precise, verifiable answer” for the net migration loss, Robinson said.

The state’s overall population lost only 1,500 people between 2016 and 2024, as there were enough births to help keep the state’s overall population pretty stable.

Without enough job applicants, Alaska employers reach Outside. “Employers need workers,” the economist said. “If they don’t find them here, they will find them somewhere else.”

Non-resident workers in Alaska have hovered around 21% to 23% of the workforce the past decade, he said.

The leisure and hospitality industry — which covers tourism — has regained the 8,000 jobs it lost during the pandemic shutdowns of 2020, according to the Department of Labor. The industry’s job count this year will be about 1,000 workers ahead of 2015.

“Those numbers would be much bigger if there were more bodies to hire,” Robinson said.

Almost 1.77 million visitors are expected in the state this year, eight times the number of 1991. 

But that strong gain has its critics, he said, noting that some residents, particularly in cruise ship destinations in Southeast Alaska, are asking: “What is the limit? How much tourism do people want?”

While Alaska has its challenges drawing new residents to move to the 49th state, it’s a different story for tourists. “People will be fascinated by what we have here in Alaska and will want to come here,” the economist told a room full of representatives of tourism, oil and gas, construction, transportation, fishing and other industries in the state.

Alaska’s mining industry has added jobs between 2015 and 2025, going from 3,000 to 3,800. 

“Our mining resources … are increasingly valuable,” Robinson said. “There is lots of growth ahead of us,” particularly with more interest in rare-earth minerals.

Job numbers for the fishing and seafood industry, oil and gas and timber industries are headed in the opposite direction.

The seafood industry dropped from 19,000 jobs in 2015 to 13,000 in 2024 as weak catches, low prices and lower-cost competition from Russia ganged up on fishing crews and processors.

The industry “is going through some really challenging periods.”

Oil and gas exploration and production jobs fell from 14,000 in 2015 to just under 9,000 this year, he said. Though a few thousand construction workers are on the job building ConocoPhillips’ Willow project and the Santos-led Pikka development on the North Slope, those numbers are counted toward the construction industry, not oil and gas, Robinson explained.

Pikka is scheduled to start oil production in 2026; Willow in 2029.

The oil and gas industry trimmed its workforce over the past decade, leaning on technology and efficiencies to produce more barrels per worker.

The other sector in Alaska to lose jobs over the years is timber and logging, losing half its labor force between 2015 and 2024, and now down to 360 jobs statewide.

Whether lumber, oil and gas, minerals or seafood, Alaska is just like other states, Robinson said. “Every state, every country has things it sells to the outside world.” 

It’s a productive cycle, he said. Wages, purchases made locally and taxes paid by industries fund roads, schools and universities.

Though what Alaska is finding is that a smaller labor force and fewer goods to sell to the outside world, or at lower prices, means less money circulating in the state’s economy.

• This article originally appeared in the Wrangell Sentinel.