bad day of fishing is supposed to beat a good day at work, or so the saying goes. When the work is fishing, however, a bad day is even worse. Buffeted by market forces, seafood processors are taking drastic measures this season, with great consequence for Alaska’s coastal communities.

The Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development reported in April that processing facilities slated for sale, closure, or temporary shutdown represent about 15 percent of seafood jobs during the peak of the season in July. For further perspective in this issue, “Rough Seas Ahead” by Alex Appel describes some of the effects for communities and seafood processing companies.

To place these developments in a broader context, the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI) recently updated its biennial report on the economic value of Alaska’s seafood industry to include data from 2022 and 2023. Among the topline findings are that the industry contributes about $6 billion to Alaska’s economy and employs more than 48,000 people annually. Many of those workers are from Outside; the industry employs about 17,000 Alaskans, and about 13,000 of those are licensed harvesters.

ASMI notes that processing facilities add value to the harvest, turning $2 billion worth of 4.8 billion pounds of seafood into $5.2 billion worth of 2.3 billion pounds of finished product. That makes seafood processing the largest manufacturer in the state, double the size of every other manufacturing type in Alaska, by employment numbers. Furthermore, Alaska’s seafood harvest supports more than 81,000 jobs nationally, larger than any other state’s by far. The ASMI findings explain why changes at a handful of processing facilities this season are so deeply concerning.

This edition of Alaska Trends hooks into more of the industry data, picks out the bones, scrapes off the scales, and serves up some ready-to-digest numbers. Fish on!