Millions of visitors flock to Southeast Alaska tourism hubs like Juneau, Ketchikan and Sitka every summer. But when the cruise ship season comes to a close, it gets pretty quiet.
Each town has a relatively small year-round population compared to the number of people who visit them. And those populations are projected to get much smaller.
According to a recent report by the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development, Southeast Alaska’s overall population is projected to drop by about 17% by 2050 — or roughly 12,000 people. That’s about the populations of Sitka and Wrangell combined.
Compare that to Alaska’s overall population, which is projected to drop by 2%.
Brian Holst, the executive director of the Juneau Economic Development Council, said without more people moving to the region, Southeast Alaska can’t sustain its population. And, it could have adverse impacts on the region’s workforce and economy.
“People are choosing to live elsewhere, we think in large part, because for all the attractiveness of Juneau, for too many families the price of a home and the cost of being here is just too much of a challenge,” he said.
The total population of Southeast Alaska is roughly 71,000, with close to half living in the capital city. Southeast Alaska relies on its year-round residents for a lot of things — like the tourism industry, fisheries and state jobs.
According to the study, the loss in population comes from a mixture of increased outmigration and deaths outnumbering births in the region.
Because while Southeast Alaska’s population grows smaller, it’s also growing older. It’s actually older than most of the state. According to a 2024 report by the Juneau Economic Development Council, the over-60 population in Juneau outnumbers the under-20 population.
Fewer people in the region means a smaller workforce, fewer young people going to schools and fewer people to care for the aging population.
The Juneau School District has already been grappling with declining enrollment for decades. There are simply fewer students to fill the schools than there were a few decades ago.
“When you have inadequate transportation in Southeast Alaska and inadequate school funding, you really eliminate two of the biggest incentives for young people to stay in Alaska,” said Juneau School Board member Emil Mackey.
At the start of the school year, Juneau’s high schools and middle schools consolidated. It was a decision made by the board in part to address the dwindling number of students. Mackey said if the younger population continues to decline, elementary school closures could be next.
“No matter how many kids we have, we have the same infrastructure costs — it costs the same to paint a building if there’s one student or 300 students in it,” he said. “I would believe, yes, future closures would have to be necessary.”
To counter the trend, more people need to move to Southeast Alaska, Holst said. That’s hard to do as Juneau isn’t building housing fast enough to meet its changing demographics, and the cost of living and rent continues to rise.
“It comes down to the cost of living,” he said. “While you can have a job, does it pay enough to be able to afford Juneau’s high cost of living, and more specifically, housing, or housing costs? Our housing costs continue to be very high. For young people in particular, it’s really hard to make ends meet here in Juneau.”
But, Holst said these are just projections and there’s still time to reverse course. The projections are based on the last several years of population trends.
“I see the glass half full here. I think we have challenges ahead of us, but there are things that we can do to make our community a little bit more affordable,” he said.
Holst said that includes things like building more affordable housing and supporting child care, which the City and Borough of Juneau has been prioritizing. On a positive note, according to the state’s study, Southeast Alaska communities’ wages rose the most in the state in 2023.
