This year is shaping up to be the 12th in a row in which Alaskans leaving the state outnumber new people moving in.
Dan Robinson, the Alaska Department of Labor’s research chief, said the streak is unprecendented in Alaska history, and he cautioned against misreading it. For instance, it may seem like people are leaving Alaska in droves, but Robinson said that’s not so.
“In the most recent year, outmigration was lower than the 10-year average,” he said Thursday at a migration summit at the University of Alaska Anchorage. “It was lower than the 20-year average.”
Robinson said the trend is more driven by the lack of new arrivals, and they’re less visible.
“It’s an exchange. There’s in and out,” he said. “We tell stories about the out. These are our neighbors who leave. It’s harder to tell stories about the people who don’t come. But they both matter, and the net is what matters more than anything.”
All told Alaska has lost about 57,000 to migration over a dozen years, he said.
Don’t take this personally. It’s not you, Alaska. It’s them, at least in part.
Robinson said a big factor is the relative strength of the Alaska economy to that of the Lower 48 since 2013.
“They’ve had steady job growth, low unemployment. And ours has been not terrible,” he said. “We had that ’15-’18 period that was rough. And then, you know, COVID is its own thing. But I think over the whole period, the U.S. economy would have been a little stronger than ours in all of those years.”
The summit was billed as “a convening on outmigration,” hosted by the Alaska Federation of Natives, the First Alaskans Institute and the Institute of Social and Economic Research. Organizers credit Alaska Congresswoman Mary Peltola for launching it. Peltola said Alaska is in a special spot on this.
“Despite the Lower 48 having a very robust discourse on immigration, that has not been Alaska’s challenge,” she said. “Our challenge has been outmigration for over 10 years. In fact, we need J-1 visas like nobody’s business, because we need foreign people to come and help us fill our sectors.”
All of Alaska’s economic sectors, she said, are short on workers.
As a counter-weight to Alaska’s net migration loss, Alaska is gaining population through natural increase, meaning that births outnumber deaths.
Liz Ruskin is the Washington, D.C., correspondent at Alaska Public Media. Reach her at lruskin@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Liz here.
