Last year, Alaska saw the biggest increase in seafood harvesting jobs in more than a decade, according to a recent report from the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development.
Seafood harvesters include permit holders and boat crews. Their numbers increased by 4% over the previous year, averaging over 200 more jobs per month than in 2024.
That growth follows a five-year decline, with harvesting job numbers hitting an all-time low in 2024 since data collection began more than two decades ago.
Economist Joshua Warren authored the report for Alaska Economic Trends, the labor department’s magazines. He said that five-year decline was in large part due to the pandemic.
“Other industries saw some level of return once COVID measures stopped, but those trends just seemed to continue for seafood harvesting,” Warren said.
On top of that, Warren said some fisheries closed — like red king crab and snow crab in the Bering Sea — and others saw reduced catch limits. But last year there weren’t any new closures.
“And we had a good salmon year, so there wasn't a negative pressure that would cause things to continue to decrease,” Warren said.
Salmon drives the industry’s harvester numbers, accounting for more than half of those jobs statewide.
Along with an increase in salmon harvesters last year, the number of harvesting jobs linked to groundfish fisheries, like pollock, also went up.
But the growth did not extend to the Aleutians, which dominates the groundfish industry.
The Aleutians and Pribilof Islands saw a 4% drop in all seafood harvester jobs, the only region in the state to lose jobs. Groundfish harvesters in the Aleutians saw an even bigger decrease at 7%, according to Warren.
He said the overall job gains in the groundfish sector came from other regions, like Kodiak.
Warren added that the Aleutians might have lost jobs due to consolidation in the groundfish and crab fisheries.
“Multiple permits will be fished on the same boat, or you can have one bigger boat than two medium boats, or something like that, and generally that reduces the number of people you need to harvest the fish,” Warren said.
It remains to be seen what the numbers will be for this year, but Warren thought another growth year could be possible.
