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Northern Lights VIEWS FROM ALASKA
Moving beyond 2020 By Sam Friedman
Seafood provides more jobs in Alaska than any other private sector, with more than 60,000 workers employed in the industry.
n the first weeks of 2022, it is not yet clear how big of an asterisk to put on the year 2020. This question complicated the preparation of the most recent edition of Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute’s long-running economic analysis series on the economic value of Alaska’s seafood industry. As usual, the “Economic Value of Alaska’s Seafood Industry” report presents data detailing the economic footprint of America’s largest seafood-producing state. For example, seafood remains the top employer of any private sector industry in Alaska — directly employing 62,200 workers. But the January 2022 report differed from past ASMI economic impact reports because of the covid-19 pandemic, which began halfway through what would have been the regular two-year study period of 2019 and 2020. For this reason, 2020 was treated as an outlier and not included in the economic impact analysis in the report. The complete report — which was prepared for ASMI by McKinley Research Group — is available at
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6 National Fisherman \ Spring 2022
www.alaskaseafood.org/industr y/ economic-impact. Key Findings The Alaska seafood industry’s 62,600 direct workers (equivalent to 37,400 full-time equivalent jobs because many seafood jobs are seasonal) earned wages totaling $1.75 billion in 2019. About half of these workers were fishermen, with another 44 percent in the seafood processing sector; and the remainder
Measuring Covid Impacts and Other Challenges The economic value of Alaska’s seafood harvest dropped in 2020 across both the harvesting and processing sectors, as well as across all major species types. Both ex-vessel and first wholesale values dropped to their lowest levels since 2009, with more than 20 percent declines from 2019. It can be difficult to untangle covid disruptions from other challenges the Alaska seafood industry faced in 2020. For example, the total value of the salmon
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employed in fishery management, hatcheries, or other fisheries-related jobs. Nationally, the Alaska seafood industry created thousands of additional jobs in distribution, grocery, and restaurant sectors. The work of catching and processing Alaska’s harvest in 2019 took place aboard 8,900 fishing vessels, 160 shore-based processors, 52 catcher-processor vessels, and 30 floating processors. For the report’s 2019 base year, the top-line national economic impact number was $15 billion. This total economic impact figure includes $6.4 billion in direct output from catching, processing, distributing, and selling Alaska’s seafood harvest. An additional $8.6 billion is from multiplier effects, the secondary economic activity produced by the direct output money moving through the U.S. economy.
Ex-vessel and wholesale values for Alaska’s top species.
www.nationalfisherman.com
