The number of people who visited Alaska’s national parks last year exceeded 2019 levels, completing the rebound from a COVID-19 slump. At the same time, National Park Service jobs in Alaska plummeted back toward pandemic lows amid the Trump administration’s purge of federal workers.
That’s according to a report in the most recent issue of Alaska Economic Trends magazine, published by the Alaska Department of Labor last week, which says the state has the five biggest national parks in the country.
Karinne Wiebold, an economist with the department, authored the report. She said in a brief phone interview that Alaska’s national parks are a big draw for visitors and an important part of the state’s economy.
“When people come to visit us, they kind of drop money as they go, you know, in the ports that they stop in, on the cruise ships, on the railroad, on the coach line as they come farther into the Interior, and of course, at the parks, when they’re working with concessionaires,” she said.
Wiebold’s report tracks annual visitation numbers at Alaska’s national parks from 2019 through last year. It shows a huge dip in 2020, after the pandemic struck, with the state’s two most visited national parks being hit the hardest. Visitors to Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve fell by 99%. Denali National Park and Preserve visitation fell by 91%.
As for the recovery – that’s also varied from one park to another. Some quickly shot above pre-COVID visitation levels by 2021, while others saw a more steady increase year to year. And a couple parks – Denali and Katmai – still haven’t reached pre-pandemic visitation, according to the report.
But, in total, 1.9 million people visited Alaska national parks last year, slightly more than the year before the pandemic. There were about 1.83 million national park visitors in Alaska in 2019, the report says.
The same isn’t true of park service employment, though, which dropped significantly in 2025.
Wiebold said the relationship between visitation and employment can be thought about in terms of supply and demand. Demand is the number of people who want to go to the parks.
“The supply, in a lot of ways, is the access to the parks: How many people can get there, how can we serve them, and what can that experience be like? And the park employment side of that does kind of speak to the supply. It speaks to our ability to serve those customers,” she said.
Back in 2020, the average number of park service jobs in Alaska fell by about 100, to 770, when compared to the prior year. That figure climbed back up to approach the pre-pandemic number, reaching almost 870 jobs in 2024. But, according to the report, at just over 780, park service jobs in the state sank close to pandemic lows last year as a result of the second Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to the federal workforce.
Wiebold said the cutbacks are still pretty new, and that it’s too soon to tell exactly how that supply and demand relationship will play out. But she said there’s a possibility for additional cuts to park service jobs to materialize this year, and that the state is gearing up for what could be its busiest tourist season ever.
The report says about 1.97 million cruise ship visitors are expected this year, a 10% increase compared to 2025. Independent and international travelers, Wiebold wrote, aren’t as clear.
“International tensions have dampened tourism expectations somewhat, and the recent U.S. war with Iran has pushed fuel prices up, which is also likely to reverberate through the tourism industry,” the report says.