Anyone who wants to get a pizza midweek at the Marine Bar or a steak or burger at the Elks Lodge knows that worker shortages have forced employers to reduce their days and cut back on offerings.

“This worker shortage is real, and it’s not going away anytime soon,” Dan Robinson, research chief at the Alaska Department of Labor, told legislators last month.

“For nine years in a row, more people have left the state than have come here,” he told the Senate Finance Committee.

The population has been stable as births have outpaced deaths, but the years of net migration loss of several t...