Alaska’s population rose slightly between 2024 and 2025 and is now at its highest level since 2017, the Alaska Department of Labor announced on Jan. 28.

Alaska had an estimated 738,737 people as of July 1, 2025, the department said in its annual state population estimate. That’s a 0.22% gain from 737,088 in 2024.

The state’s population grew on a year-over-year basis because the number of births in the state exceeded the number of Alaskans who died.

That natural increase — births minus deaths — of 3,389 people was greater than the number of people who moved out of the state.

Separate from the gain of births over deaths from 2024 to 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.

South Carolina (1.5%), Idaho (1.4%) and North Carolina (1.3%) had the highest growth rates among states. Vermont (-0.29%), Hawaii (-0.15%) and West Virginia (-0.07%) had the lowest and were among five states that posted population declines.

The U.S. Census Bureau has slightly different figures for Alaska than the state — it estimated a 0.1% population gain between 2024 and 2025 — but the Alaska Department of Labor conducts surveys of military bases and group homes that the Census Bureau does not, said Alaska state demographer David Howell. For that reason, he believes the state’s estimate is more accurate than the Census Bureau’s.

Overall, Howell said, Alaska seemed to simply extend existing population trends between 2024 and 2025.

“We’re continuing to see losses in the working-age population. … We’re really starting to see declines in the school-age population. It was growing slightly at the beginning of this decade, but at this point, there’s about 1,000 more 17-year-olds than there are 4-year-olds. And so we’re just going through aging,” he said.

Alaska’s median age is 37.1, one and a half years older than it was at the start of the decade. Haines, the state’s oldest community, has a median age above 50.

As the state ages, the number of new births is dropping and the number of deaths is rising.

Howell and the Department of Labor are predicting that the state’s population will start dropping steadily by the year 2050.

The number of births in the latest population estimate is the lowest since the trans-Alaska oil pipeline was built. The number of deaths dropped slightly last year, but Howell said there may be a morbid reason for that: The COVID-19 pandemic peaked in Alaska in 2021-2022 and may have killed elderly Alaskans who would have died later.

On a borough and city level, existing trends continued in the latest forecast. The Matanuska-Susitna Borough continues to be the fastest-growing large area of the state, the population of Anchorage is relatively flat, the Interior’s population is growing slightly and Southeast Alaska’s population is falling.

The Alaska Beacon is an independent, donor-funded news organization. Alaskabeacon.com.