laska Business has been celebrating the corporations that have a significant impact on Alaska’s economy since 1993. At the time, the corporations weren’t ranked as the list didn’t have specific ranking criteria. Instead, the Alaska Business editorial team held long, detailed, and occasionally passionate discussions about which organizations around the state were providing jobs, owned or leased property, used local vendors, demonstrated a high level of community engagement, and in general enriched Alaska.
In 1993, had we ranked them by Alaska employees, Atlantic Richfield would’ve been number one with 2,914 Alaska employees. The top ten would’ve also included Carrs Gottstein, Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, Providence Alaska, BP Alaska, Ocean Beauty Seafoods, Veco, Lynden, and Alaska Int’l Industries. In total, the Corporate 100 in its inaugural year reported 55,023 Alaska employees and about 3 million worldwide employees.
Over the years, many corporations and other interested parties reached out to us with inquiries about the Corporate 100: How does a company qualify? How are companies selected? What are the criteria for being considered?
We realized that many of our readers wanted a more detailed idea of exactly what the Corporate 100 is and how companies were being selected, and of course many companies wanted clarity on what (if anything) could be done to lead to their inclusion on the list.
And so in 2016 the Alaska Business team held several in-depth conversations about how to make the Corporate 100 list slightly more concrete. And in discussions about which qualities can even be quantified and ranked, we realized that for the magazine—and our readers, and most Alaskans—which corporations are providing local jobs matters. It matters to the employees, it matters to vendors and subcontractors, it matters for local policy making and community growth, it matters for corporate giving and volunteering. Having jobs in Alaska builds Alaska—there’s no question.
In 2016, the first year we officially ranked the Corporate 100 companies, NANA topped the list, reporting 5,000 Alaska employees, 2,000 more than Atlantic Richfield twenty-three years earlier. NANA was followed by Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, Providence Alaska, Fred Meyer, Carrs|Safeway, CH2M, GCI, BP Alaska, Alaska Airlines, and Bristol Bay Native Corporation.
In total, in 2016 the Corporate 100 were employing 67,466 Alaskans and almost 2.5 million people worldwide.
Five years later, instead of anticipating another year of growth, we braced ourselves to see a drop in employment figures because of the devastating effect of COVID-19 on employment in every community across the globe. In a testament to their commitment to Alaska, their employees, and their ability to adapt, the Corporate 100 companies, the majority of which are consistent from year to year, reported a slight dip this year in Alaska. In 2020 the group reported a total of 78,378 Alaska employees, which dropped in 2021 to 74,537, approximately 5 percent less.
In contrast, the Corporate 100 reported employing 2.8 million people worldwide in 2020, and this year reported 1.5 million, a significant drop of 46 percent.
Despite a hard year, the Anchorage Economic Development Corporation anticipates that by the end of 2021, Alaska will stop losing jobs and will even regain some positions as the tourism industry slowly rebuilds itself following the pandemic, oil prices remain strong and even gradually climb, the healthcare industry gets back on its feet, and the entire state continues to overcome a several-year recession.
It’s positive news either way that many of Alaska’s largest employers have managed to keep their employees employed.
And leading that list again in 2021 is Providence Health & Service Alaska, which reported 5,000 Alaska employees. It’s followed by NANA, Princess Cruises|Holland America|Seabourn, Fred Meyer, Trident Seafoods Corporation, Carrs|Safeway, Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, Southcentral Foundation, Foundation Health Partners, and GCI.
While the top ten ranked entities in the Corporate 100 represent some of the state’s most prominent industries—health and wellness organizations make up 12 percent of the list, and Alaska Native corporations are 15 percent—the largest number of companies, 16 percent, come from the transportation industry.
Other industries represented by the Corporate 100, all less than 10 percent, are construction, engineering, financial services, industrial services, mining, retail/wholesale trade, seafood, telecommunications, travel and tourism, and utilities.
This is, unsurprisingly, an accurate representation of Alaska’s major economic sectors, even though the Corporate 100 list does not include every qualified corporation. Some decline to publish official employee numbers, and since we insist on annually updated data and company participation, we respect their right to do so.
Even so, we continue to publish this list every year as it is still a highly informative look at the shape of Alaska’s economy. And while we may not be ranking these companies on philanthropic giving or how often they opt to utilize Alaska-based vendors—we know they excel in those areas as well.
Congratulations to every organization that has ranked on the Alaska Business 2021 Corporate 100. 
