600 alaskans took the buyout

And most of them weren't laid off, they walked away on purpose.

New research out of the University of Alaska Anchorage put a hard number on something a lot of us have felt. Between the spring of 2024 and this spring, Alaska's federal workforce shrank by almost sixteen percent.

That's one of the steepest drops in the whole country. And Alaska leans on those federal jobs more than almost any other state.

Here's the surprising part. The biggest chunk of people didn't lose their jobs to layoffs. More than six hundred Alaskans took a buyout, a check to walk out the door, and they took it.

And those spots are sitting empty, because there's a hiring freeze on. These weren't paper-pushers either. We're talking park rangers and fishery technicians, the people whose work keeps our fishing, our parks, and our tourism running.

The economist behind the research made one more point that stuck with me. When your most experienced people all leave at once, they take decades of know-how with them, and you can't just hire that back off the street.

So this is one to keep an eye on. Fewer federal workers touches a lot more of the Alaska economy than most of us realize.