New reporting from the Anchorage Daily News reveals that in the past year, Alaska “was among the states that lost the largest share of its federal workforce” due to Dan Sullivan-supported DOGE cuts. These cuts directly threaten jobs that supported commercial fishing, subsistence management and public safety issues across Alaska.
Local officials are warning that because federal employment is concentrated in many smaller communities, “Alaska could feel a disproportionate economic impact from workforce reductions compared with many other states.”
Sullivan supported and defended these cuts, including ones to the National Park Service that sank “park service jobs in the state … close to pandemic lows” even as visitor demand hit new highs — costing Alaskans jobs and straining access to the parks Alaska’s economy relies on.
Read more about the devastating impact of Sullivan-supported federal job cuts in Alaska:
Anchorage Daily News: Alaska lost federal jobs at one of the highest rates among states in 2025, report finds
Alaska was among the states that lost the largest share of its federal workforce in the first year of the current Trump administration, according to a new report from the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development.
By the fourth quarter of 2025, Alaska’s federal civilian workforce had fallen from 15,374 jobs a year earlier to 13,767, a loss of 1,607 jobs, or 10.5%, according to a recent Alaska Economic Trends report.
Early last year, the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, moved quickly to shrink the size of the federal government through hiring freezes and mass layoffs. In Alaska, the cuts initially hit workers at multiple agencies including the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Officials said in February 2025 that it was unclear how many jobs would ultimately be lost or how broadly the reductions would spread.
Nationally, federal government jobs in December 2025 had dropped by nearly 250,000 compared to December 2024 figures.
Economists say a steep decline in federal jobs in Alaska during the last few months of 2025 show a clear picture of the extent of DOGE’s cuts after workers who took deferred resignation offers were removed from the federal government’s payrolls.
Based on the annual average, Alaska lost 4.5% of its civilian federal jobs in 2025 — nearly 700 positions — compared with 2024, ranking third nationally behind Maryland and New Mexico for the largest percentage of each state’s federal workforce reduction.
The report found the more than 1,600 job losses by the end of 2025 were spread across nearly every major federal department.
The Department of Defense — Alaska’s largest federal employer — lost 755 jobs by the end of 2025, down to 5,569 from a total of 6,323 positions in the state at the end of 2024.
The Interior Department saw another large decline at the end of last year, losing 226 positions compared with the end of 2024. The Department of Agriculture lost 223 jobs during this same time period, driven primarily by cuts within the U.S. Forest Service.
Local officials have warned that because federal employment is concentrated in many smaller communities and supports such a broad range of industries, Alaska could feel a disproportionate economic impact from workforce reductions compared with many other states.
In response to the cuts, researchers warned last spring that the changes threatened long-running fisheries surveys, wildlife monitoring, weather and ocean observing programs, and other scientific work that contextualizes commercial fishing, subsistence management and public safety issues across the state.
Federal employment plays an outsized role in Alaska’s economy compared to other states, Wiebold said. Federal jobs generally pay higher-than-average wages and are spread throughout the state, from military bases and veterans hospitals to national forests and fisheries management offices.
The job cuts amounted to $36.5 million in lost federal wages in 2025, according to the report.
“When we lose federal jobs, we are losing jobs held by Alaskans that pay fairly well,” Wiebold said. “When those jobs go away, we feel that in our economy.”
For roughly the past decade, Alaska’s federal workforce had remained relatively stable, fluctuating by only a few hundred jobs from year to year.
“It’s pretty hard to tell what the long-term effects are going to be,” Wiebold said about the impact of the reductions. “A lot of it depends on whether or not the job levels that we have right now are steady, or if they’re continuing to go down. And then another question is, as the year progresses, as maybe even more years progress, will we find that some of those jobs needed to be filled and will be filled again?”
###
