It’s hard for someone who loves Alaska as much as I do to understand why people might not be happy here and would seek to leave. Well, I don’t reckon I’m smart enough to tell anyone else how to live, and Alaska is one of those places that isn’t for everybody. Some folks can’t take the winters. Some folks can’t handle the wildly varying hours of daylight. So, it’s not terribly surprising to read that more people are moving out of Alaska than are moving in.
Alaska’s population rose slightly between 2024 and 2025 and is now at its highest level since 2017, the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development announced Wednesday.
Alaska had an estimated 738,737 people as of July 1, 2025, the department said in its annual state population estimate. That’s up 1,649 people from the department’s July 2024 population estimate of 737,088.
The rise comes despite a revision that erased thousands of international immigrants that the U.S. Census mistakenly believed had moved to Alaska.
So, a big part of it was a mistake. Well, these things happen, and one wants to have them fixed, so we have a better idea of how many people live here.
Read More: Alaska Man Monday: Lynx and Alaska Politics
Hint: More Alaskans are being born than are dying.
Between 2024 and 2025, 1,740 more people moved out of Alaska than moved here. It was the 13th consecutive year of negative net migration in Alaska, extending the longest streak of negative net migration since 1945.
Overall, the state’s population grew by 0.22%. That was less than the nation as a whole, 0.5%. Compared with the other 49 states and the District of Columbia, Alaska’s population growth ranked 40th.
That’s probably true, too. But here’s the first thing that comes to my mind: These numbers are generally used for things like electors and congressional districts. None of this will make a difference here; Alaska has and likely will only ever have one Congressional district, currently held by Republican Representative Nick Begich III (AK-At Large), and we will probably only ever have the same three Electoral College votes. These numbers won’t change that, and as far as the overall population of the state goes, it’s not a huge shift that would affect many Alaskans either way.
Read More: Alaska Man Monday: An Unfortunate Fox; Also, It’s Cold in Fairbanks
Of course, my view is colored by where we live in the Susitna Valley. We aren’t particularly near any of the military bases, and we aren’t in Anchorage. We’re out in the borough, and it seems to me that most of the folks who live out here live out here for a reason. We like the peace and quiet, we like the rural lifestyle, we like the varying seasons, even if, by this time of year (early February), even the wooliest old sourdoughs are ready for spring. And, of course, we enjoy one thing that is one of the rarest of all luxuries in this day and age: Privacy.
As for my wife and me, well, you still couldn’t pull us out of Alaska with a tractor. We’re staying.
Alaska Man score: 2.5 of 5 moose nuggets. It’s kind of a wash for a lot of Alaskans.
Speaking of Alaskans, we grow them tough up here; outdoor recreation can, however, sometimes go wrong.
Now, since we’re talking about seasons:
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