Alaska's population fell last year for the first time since a devastating recession in the late 1980s drove residents away by the tens of thousands, but low oil prices are not to blame this time, according to a new report by the state labor department.
Deaths have slowly but steadily increased in the state over the last three decades, as the baby boomer population has aged. The number of births, on the other hand, remained essentially flat. Additionally, more people left Alaska than arrived between July 2013 and July 2014, the period covered in the report.
State demographer and report author Eddie Hunsinger said the improving economy and better job and income prospects in the rest of the country are likely reasons for the estimated drop in net migration to Alaska.
"In very general terms, the difference between the unemployment rate here and down south can play a role in migration and it does seem the rest of U.S. economy is doing very well," Hunsinger said.
While the decrease itself was very small, Hunsinger called it "remarkable" because Alaska's population has been growing for such a long time. Overall, the population dropped by 61 people, according to the latest estimates by the Alaska Department of Labor. That's less than an estimate from the U.S. Census Bureau last year, which predicted a drop of 527 people over the same period.
The last time the population dropped was in 1987-88, when the state was in the depths of a recession whose severity is infamous among longtime residents.
"The decrease is significant in the sense that we haven't seen it in a long time," Hunsinger said.
The price of oil is about 40 percent lower than it was a year ago, but was not a factor in the population drop, he said.
"This data all came to us before the decrease in the price of oil," Hunsinger said. "It's not related to that."
Looking at migration alone, Alaska lost 7,488 people from mid-2013 to mid-2014, according to labor department data. It was the second straight year that more people left the state than arrived.
"Tens of thousands of people moved to Alaska," Hunsinger said. "It's just that more people left."
Alaska has one of the highest turnover rates in the country, in large part because of rotating military personnel. Hunsinger said in any given year, the number of recent arrivals makes up 5 percent to 7 percent of the population. People tend to leave the state at about the same rate, he said.
Other states on average report rates of 3 percent to 5 percent for both new and departing residents, he said.
The number of births has changed little since the late 1980s, and last year was no exception, with 11,351 babies born. But the number of deaths, at 3,924, nearly doubled in the same period.
"Deaths will play an even bigger role in population change in future decades," Hunsinger wrote. "The rate is projected to continue increasing as the population ages."
While the Matanuska-Susitna Borough and Gulf Coast grew in population, every other region from Anchorage to the Aleutians to Northern Alaska saw decreases.The largest population decrease occurred in the Fairbanks North Star Borough with an estimated loss of 1,873 people. The largest increase was in the Mat-Su Borough, which grew by 2,069 residents.