Alaska could be facing its first long-term decline in population and resulting economic slowdown

After 11 straight years with more residents leaving Alaska than arriving, the state for the first time projects a long-term population decline, according to a report released this week from the state’s demographer.

And as Alaskans keep getting older, the number of deaths will rise while births keep falling, adding to the population decline looking out to 2050, according to David Howell, state demographer, writing in the state’s latest Alaska Economic Trends magazine.

The projections, if they hold, could have important consequences, he said in an interview Tuesday.

Fewer students will be available to fill the state’s public schools and universities.

Also, a population decline would continue to constrain the local workforce, requiring businesses to rely on importing workers. The nonresident worker rate is already at its highest point in years, the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development recently said.

“A shrinking population would definitely slow the economy,” he said.

Slight growth, then decline

Howell and others originally released the population outlook in a report in July. Howell provided additional details on Tuesday.

The outlook is based on current trends and long-term averages, he said.

Alaska’s population has grown slightly in recent years, after falling for several years, he said.

It will continue to grow slightly for a while, Howell said.

But the combined forces of an aging population and net outmigration will begin leading to declines in 2033-34, he projects.

By 2050, the state’s population will fall to 723,000, a 2% decrease from the 737,000 Alaskans counted in 2023.

An expected worker crash

Howell predicts that Alaskans on average will continue growing “considerably older” over the next quarter-century.

The average Alaskan in 1980 was 26, after young people flocked to the state to help build the trans-Alaska pipeline.

The median age is now 36.5, still relatively young compared to the national average, he said.

By 2050, the median age in Alaska is expected to jump to 40.9, he said.

Since 1990, the state’s yearly natural increase — meaning births minus deaths — has fallen, according to the report.

“During the past two years, natural increase hit its lowest level since the early 1950s, when Alaska had fewer than 200,000 people,” Howell wrote in the report.

Overall, Alaska’s working-age population from 20 to 64 years old faces a long-term decline, he said.

[As more Alaskans continue to leave than arrive, here’s where they’re moving]

A takeaway from the projections is that waves of retirements are on track to overshadow new recruits to the local workforce, he said.

Baby boomers who have been retiring are now being replaced by millennials who are 28 to 43 years old, he said. But as 2050 approaches, those millennials will be aging out of the workforce, he said.

“And at that point, there’s really nobody behind them to replace them, so what you’ll really see is that labor force start to shrink very, very rapidly once that starts to happen,” he said.

“Even if we had birth rates explode today, those workers would just be hitting the labor force as millennials are hitting retirement ages,” he said.

‘A much smaller number of children’

Of course, the projections can change, Howell said.

Future migration trends could differ, potentially altering the population outlook, he said in the interview.

Maybe there will be a big project in mining or oil that requires large numbers of workers to move to Alaska, he said.

As for declining birth rates, those aren’t easily reversed, he said.

“Worldwide, once birth rates start to decline, it’s very rare that they come back up,” he said.

Alaska still has a high fertility rate — meaning the average number of children per woman in her lifetime — compared to the rest of the U.S.

It’s at 1.9. But that’s below the 2.1 needed to replace the existing population, Howell wrote.

Youth numbers in Alaska are already low historically.

“The number of young Alaskans from birth to age 19 is the smallest it’s been since 1991, at 195,700,” he writes.

That youth population will fall by 14%, to 169,100, by 2050, he estimates.

By 2050, there will be “a much smaller number of children,” Howell writes.