“In some ways, Wrangell is typical … it’s also an outlier,” Rain Coast Data director Meilani Schijvens said of the community’s aging population, declining workforce numbers and heavy reliance on health care jobs.

Just like much of Southeast, the town is losing population, and those who stay are growing older.

“It’s a trend we see across the region,” but Wrangell is taking a bigger hit, Schijvens said in a December interview.

She started looking at Southeast economic numbers about 25 years ago, noting that Wrangell was one of the oldest towns then and is getting older.

“Between 2010 and 2024, Wrangell’s population declined by 14%, or 339 residents (down to about 2,000). The losses were especially sharp among children and working-age residents,” Schijvens wrote in “Wrangell Alaska Economic Conditions Report 2025,” prepared under contract for the borough.

Over this period, the number of children decreased by 26%, residents in their 20s and 30s fell by 19%, and residents in their 50s declined by nearly half, she reported.

“In 1990, children under the age of 20 made up one-third of Wrangell’s population, but by 2024 they accounted for only 21%.”

At the same time, “the number of residents aged 60 and older increased by 33%,” the report stated. “This group represented just 10% of Wrangell’s population in 1990 but had expanded to 37% by 2024.”

The town’s median age was 49.1 in 2024, much older than the statewide median of 35.5 years old.

Wrangell population decreased at a faster rate than other communities from 2014 to 2024, she said. Wrangell’s population dropped 12%, Juneau was down 6%, Sitka and Prince of Wales lost 10%.

“It’s a trend we see across the region.”

Borough officials have stepped up their efforts in the past couple of years to attract new businesses to town, including pushing to develop the former 6-Mile Mill property as a marine industry site, promoting tourism and working with state agencies toward offering timber sales on the island.

Of those in the labor force last year, one-quarter of Wrangell’s economy came from health care jobs, as measured as a percentage of the community’s workforce wages, Schijvens said in the December interview.

“That’s a rather unusual characteristic of the Wrangell economy.”

Across Southeast, health care is about 11% of all jobs; statewide it’s 13%. Even in Sitka, with a large SEARHC hospital and health care campus, those jobs add up to about 18% of the labor force income, she said.

“By 2025, SEARHC’s Wrangell operations included approximately 174 full-time equivalent workers, including direct contractors,” according to the Rain Coast Data October report for the borough.

The report said the health care payroll in 2024, at $15.2 million, exceeded all other industries in town, in addition to paying the highest average wage in the community. Seafood and maritime came in second, at $13.7 million; followed by federal, state, municipal and tribal government, $12.6 million; and the visitor industry, $4.5 million.

“Health care emerged as Wrangell’s largest economic sector in the 2020s,” the report said. “SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium took over the borough-owned Wrangell Medical Center in 2018. Between 2016 and 2024, health care jobs in the community grew by 53%.”

SEARHC opened its new, $30 million Wrangell Medical Center in 2021.

The health care provider uses a lot of travelers to fill its jobs in Wrangell. Schijvens noted that could provide the benefit of introducing travelers as potential new residents.

“Your seafood sector is also very, very large,” she said. Close to 20% of Wrangell’s total workforce earnings in 2024 came from seafood, even higher than Sitka’s 17%.

Almost half of the town’s 295 self-employed people in 2024 worked in the seafood and maritime industries, her report said.

The high number of self-employed people — close to 28% of the Wrangell workforce in 2024 —“is typical across Southeast.”

Where the community differs from much of Southeast is in the visitor industry. “Wrangell hasn’t leaned into the tourism sector” as much as other towns, she said.

Tourism “is the low-hanging fruit from an economic perspective,” as visitors flock to the state with money to spend.

Wrangell has two star attractions, she said, in the Anan Wildlife Observatory and the Stikine River. But the U.S. Forest Service limits visitors to Anan, and running more Stikine day trips would require a substantial financial commitment by tour operators.

“They need someplace to go when they get off the boat,” she said of cruise ship passengers. “Wrangell has to figure out a way to handle those tours.”

The Southeast economics consultant noted that Wrangell years ago built its tourism on independent ferry travelers. But that business has collapsed and a strong tourism trade based on ferry ridership is no longer viable, she said.

According to Rain Coast Data numbers, 2,000 summer ferry travelers came to Wrangell in 2010, but that had dropped to just over 200 in 2024. Less frequent service and inconvenient schedules have cut into ferry ridership.

The Wrangell Convention and Visitor Bureau and the borough’s Economic Development Department are making a concerted effort to promote the community for independent travelers, while also looking to attract a manageable number of cruise ships to town.

Schijvens did see a bright spot in her annual survey of Wrangell business owners. “There seems to be a move toward future optimism,” she said of her spring 2025 Southeast survey results.

“I’m so used to Wrangell being the most pessimistic community,” she said of the annual business outlook question.

This year, Gustavus was the most pessimistic, and Wrangell was second.

“It was nice to see more positivity.”