Alaska's commercial fishing industry, facing lower prices for its harvest and rising costs, saw a loss of 443 harvesting jobs in 2024—a fifth straight year of employment loss, state labor officials said.
That 7.6% job decline was similar to the previous year's 7.8% job loss, the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development noted in the November issue of Alaska Economic Trends.
Seafood harvesting in Alaska has lost over a third of its total jobs in the past decade, with fishing employment down every year of the last 10 except for 2019. That includes the summer peak, which has fallen about 30%, from 24,600 jobs in July 2014 to 17,400 in July 2024.
While most other Alaska industries bounced back after big job declines during the Covid-19 pandemic, seafood harvesting continues to struggle as the industry faces unpredictable runs, the volatility of climate change, seafood processing plant closures and sales, and disrupted fisheries.
International trade is also shifting, with China now purchasing more fish from Vietnam than from the United States.
Labor Department economist Joshua Warren said that how tariffs will affect these relationships isn't clear, but they will likely put additional pressure on prices as domestic harvesters compete with countries that have more favorable trade deals.
While stocks of some species, such as sablefish, have boomed in recent years, prices were too low to make large harvests worth the cost. Market demands have also disrupted the economics of herring fisheries. Other fisheries closed earlier than usual or entirely, including the Bering Sea crab fisheries in 2022 and 2023 after stocks crashed, then reopened in 2024 with greatly reduced catch limits.
Salmon harvesting, long the state's highest-value catch, has seen much lower harvests in recent years but continues to drive the industry. It is so labor-intensive compared to other harvests that it represents over half of fishing jobs, so losses in salmon-harvesting jobs often drive statewide losses. Over the last decade, the number of salmon-harvesting jobs has dropped 40%, but November and December job counts ticked up in 2024, suggesting gains for salmon in the early months of 2025 are likely.
Employment in sablefish harvesting was down by 9.3%, or 41 jobs—a new low. While sablefish is a groundfish, it's discussed separately from other groundfish because its workforce is so large relative to other groundfish harvests, the report said.
The other groundfish category is mainly pollock. Groundfish harvesting dropped to a record low of 664 jobs in 2024, a loss of 11% from the previous year. This category also showed end-of-year employment growth, with more groundfish harvesters working late in the year than ever. Employment declines were attributed in part to large harvesters becoming more efficient, needing fewer jobs to bring in the same catch.
Halibut was one of just two fisheries—herring being the other—to spring back from pandemic job lows, approaching normal levels in 2022. Halibut fishing employment was 4.7% lower in 2024, a loss of 45 jobs.
Crab harvests bucked the trend, adding 17 jobs over the year, or a little over 5% growth, although the peak declined when Kodiak fisheries moved back to January and Bering Sea fisheries continued to lose jobs. Despite the year's small overall employment gain, crab-harvesting jobs statewide have trended downward over the long term, for a loss of over 305 jobs for the decade ending in 2024.
Southeast Alaska, the only region with harvesting in all the major species categories, lost 8% of its harvesting jobs after a flat year in 2023. In Southeast, only the crab harvest added jobs in 2024. That boost was driven by a summer employment recovery and by summer and winter harvests stretching into additional months for some permit holders.
