As more and more baby boomers leave Alaska and birth rates stay low, the population of Juneau and of Alaska as a whole continues a four year negative trend, according to state data.<\/p>\n
“Year after year, we’re seeing the same patterns for the last four years,” said Alaska state demographer David Howell in a phone interview. “It seems like the baby boomer generation is migrating out of the state a little faster. It’s not necessarily a new pattern, we’re just seeing more people at that age group in net migration losses.”<\/p>\n
A baby boomer is a person born between 1946 and 1964, which puts their ages between 56 and 74 in 2020, the most recent year for census data, Howell said.<\/p>\n
“We had this massive group of baby boomers move up here in the ‘80s and ‘90s,” Howell said. “We kind of wondered if they were going to leave the state. And now, it looks like they are kind of leaving the state.”<\/p>\n
In 2010, there were approximately 186,000 residents that fit into the boomer age category. By 2015, that had dropped to about 172,000, and by 2020, that number was sitting at just over 150,000, Howell said. Large-scale emigration isn’t new to Alaska, Howell said, but in the past, there were more easily identifiable causes.<\/p>\n