Southeast Alaska’s population is expected to drop 17% between 2023 and 2050, far more than any other region of the state, according to the latest projections, with Wrangell showing the steepest decline at 33%, from 2,039 residents in 2023 to 1,988 in July 2025, 1,845 in 2030 and down to 1,349 in 2050.
Wrangell’s population has been in a steady decline since the timber industry started cutting back in the 1990s and the mill closed down permanently in 2008, and with deaths outnumbering births.
The state’s latest projections are not based on any forecasts about jobs or the economy, explained Davd Howell, state demographer at the Alaska Department of Labor. The numbers are based on historical trends of births, deaths and people moving out of town.
“There are no economic factors in the projections,” he said.
The projections consider birth rates over the past five years, and death rates and outmigration over the past 20 years, he said. “Birth rates in Alaska have been declining for some time.”
The state has suffered net outmigration — more people leaving than new residents moving here — for the past 11 years.
The Labor Department prepares long-range population estimates every two years, Howell said.
The only time that economic factors get added to the mix, he explained, is when they are certain, such as when the U.S. Air Force announced it was stationing more planes, pilots and support crew in Fairbanks.
The Labor Department report published Dec. 3 shows a 2% statewide population drop by 2050, from 737,000 in 2023 to 723,000, a loss of 14,000. The report was published in the December issue of Alaska Economic Trends, the department’s in-house magazine.
Most of that decline will be in Southeast Alaska, which is expected to decline by 12,000 people by 2050.
“Southeast is older than most of the state and its birth rates are lower, leading to a natural decrease,” the report said. “Deaths outnumbering births throughout the projected period and net migration losses point to a steady population decline in Southeast.”
Communities with older populations tend to have fewer births. The median age in Wrangell was 48.1 years old in 2023, according to state statistics, a dozen years older than the statewide number.
In Southeast, the projections show an 8.6% decline in Juneau’s population to below 27,200 by 2050. In addition to Wrangell’s 33% decline, the numbers show Sitka losing 24% and Ketchikan 20%.
The only other major regional decline projected in the report is a 7% drop in the Interior.
Population increases are forecast of 11% in Southwest Alaska, 4% in the northern region of the state and 1% in the Anchorage/Matanuska-Susitna Borough area.
Southwest Alaska and the northern part of the state have relatively younger populations and higher fertility rates compared to the rest of the state, prompting the projected increases there.
The grim population news for Southeast matches other recent studies.
Issues of concern to Southeast residents and business leaders are housing shortages and affordability, and lack of essential services including child care, which in turn is causing workforce shortages, according to a 2024 economic report compiled by Rain Coast Data for the Southeast Conference.
The drop in Juneau’s younger population has been a years-long concern reflected in school enrollment, which fell from a peak of 5,701 in 1999 to roughly 4,000 this year and is projected to drop by several hundred more students by the end of the decade.
The projected statewide decline in population is the first since the department began its forecasts.
Fewer residents, with those who stay getting older, is not a positive factor. “A shrinking population would definitely slow the economy,” Howell said.
Alaskans will continue growing “considerably older” over the next quarter-century, he said. The average Alaskan in 1980 was 26, after young people flocked to the state to help build the trans-Alaska oil pipeline and take jobs in the expanding economy. 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.
Baby boomers who have been retiring are now being replaced by millennials who are 28 to 43 years old, Howell said. But as 2050 approaches, those millennials will be aging out of the workforce.
“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.”
Of course, the projections can change, Howell said. Future migration trends could differ, potentially altering the population outlook. 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. “Worldwide, once birth rates start to decline, it’s very rare that they come back up,” he said.
Alaska’s fertility rate — the average number of children per woman in her lifetime — is 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,” the report said. The youth population will fall by 14%, to 169,100, by 2050, according to the state’s estimates.
The Juneau Empire and Anchorage Daily News contributed to this report.
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