September 14, 2026
Ky Holland

Alaska may be entering a period of continued large project investments that build on the recent impacts of the Willow and Pikka projects on the North Slope.  A new report shared by the Workforce Investment Board provides an update and valuable information on the gas pipeline and other large resource projects’ workforce needs. Not mentioned but also significant, would be the JBER and other military projects that overlap the same planning for workforce needs from 2026-2031  (2026 AKLNG Workforce Trends & Opportunities An Environmental Scan)

A gas pipeline, mining projects, critical minerals development, energy infrastructure, ports, roads, military construction, disaster recovery and community resilience projects could collectively create thousands of jobs over the coming decade. Some will move forward. Some will be delayed. Some may never be built.

That uncertainty creates a workforce challenge we need to manage strategically.

If we wait until projects are under construction to prepare Alaskans, we will be too late. But if we train large numbers of people for a specific project that is delayed or never happens, we can leave workers with training but no job—and potentially drive them out of Alaska looking for work.

The new administration should therefore develop a multi-project workforce and construction strategy project that invests in strategic jobs needed regardless of which projects advance —not a separate workforce plan for every.

Train for careers, not just projects

I worked on this challenge years ago as executive director of the Alaska Process Industry Careers Consortium. We worked with employers, educators and training organizations to identify career pathways that could prepare Alaskans for good jobs while recognizing the realities of major-project construction.

One of the most important lessons was simple: not every project job is equally valuable to Alaska’s long-term economy.

For jobs requiring skills that can transfer to another Alaska project, lead to higher-skilled work, or ultimately support operation and maintenance of completed facilities, developing Alaskans should be our highest priority.

For short-duration jobs with limited transferability and little likelihood of continued employment in Alaska, importing a temporary workforce may sometimes make more economic sense than training Alaskans for jobs that disappear when construction ends.

That’s not about keeping outside workers away. Alaska has always needed workers from elsewhere, and another period of major construction will require them again. It’s about being strategic about where our limited workforce-development dollars—and our limited number of Alaskan workers—create the greatest long-term value.

We should particularly invest in upskilling Alaskans who already have foundational skills and experience. An experienced equipment operator, electrician, mechanic, welder, technician or construction worker may need relatively modest additional training to move into a higher-value position. Alaska experience itself has value. We should build on it.

Manage the portfolio, not just individual projects

There is another tool available to the state: project timing.

A boom in which five major projects compete simultaneously for the same electricians, operators, engineers, contractors, housing and equipment isn’t necessarily a success. It can drive costs upward, overwhelm Alaska businesses and force projects to import more labor and capacity.

The opposite is also damaging. A two-year gap between major projects can force trained workers and contractors to leave Alaska because there isn’t enough work to keep them here.

Where the state controls funding, permitting, procurement or project schedules, we should consider the entire construction portfolio. Sometimes accelerating a project may make sense. Sometimes sequencing or slowing one may produce greater overall value. This is no different from how any private company would manage its resources to maximize benefits and return on investment, utilize existing assets, and minimize costs.

Our objective should be a reasonably continuous pipeline of work that allows Alaskans to move from project to project and construction to operations and management, accumulating skills, experience, and earning power along the way.

That also allows Alaska companies to invest confidently in employees, equipment and capabilities rather than scaling rapidly for one project and dismantling that capacity afterward.

Share infrastructure and training across projects

We have done versions of this before.

During my earlier work with Alaska’s process industries, I was involved with the North Slope Training Cooperative and the effort to create common safety training standards. Instead of every owner and contractor repeatedly training workers in different systems, standardized training allowed qualified workers to move more readily among employers and projects while maintaining strong safety and environmental expectations.

We should apply that same thinking much more broadly today.

What training can be standardized? What credentials can follow workers between projects? What equipment, logistics systems, staging areas or workforce facilities can projects share? How can one project’s investment reduce the cost of the next?

Those questions become especially important as Alaska simultaneously confronts major disaster recovery and resilience needs in rural communities. The state’s broader recovery planning already identifies opportunities to coordinate projects, bundle procurement and logistics, strengthen local businesses, and turn billions of dollars of necessary infrastructure investment into lasting economic capacity rather than a series of isolated construction efforts.

Housing is workforce infrastructure

We also cannot recruit thousands of workers without asking where they will live.

That applies not only to remote construction camps, but also to workers based in Anchorage, Fairbanks and regional hub communities providing engineering, logistics, management and support.

Housing shortages can quickly become project constraints—and major projects can make already difficult housing markets worse for existing residents.

Remote camps deserve particularly strategic planning. Where practical, camps should use modular, reusable buildings and utility systems—housing, power, water, wastewater and heating—that can be relocated after construction.

Instead of treating a camp as a disposable project expense, we should ask whether some of that infrastructure can eventually support another Alaska project or be transferred to communities that desperately need housing and utility capacity.

A dollar spent supporting construction today could then leave behind an asset serving Alaskans for decades.

Grow capacity, capability and competitiveness

This is ultimately bigger than workforce development.

I think about Alaska’s economic strength in three dimensions: capacity, capability and competitiveness.

Capacity is having enough people, businesses, equipment, housing and infrastructure to do the work.

Capability is having the skills, experience, technology and management systems to perform increasingly sophisticated and higher-value work.

Competitiveness means putting those pieces together well enough that Alaska workers and companies can win the work—and eventually compete for opportunities beyond the projects that initially built their expertise.

Major projects can strengthen all three. But that won’t happen automatically.

If every project recruits independently, builds temporary infrastructure independently, creates its own training requirements and then disappears, we will capture wages during construction but leave much of the long-term economic opportunity behind.

If instead we deliberately coordinate projects, workforce development, infrastructure, procurement and training, each project can help build the workforce and businesses needed for the next one.

An opportunity for the next administration

The next administration should bring project developers, labor, Alaska businesses, training organizations, school districts, the university, Tribal organizations, communities and state agencies together around a statewide multi-project workforce and capacity plan.

And because we cannot know today exactly which projects will proceed or when, it shouldn’t depend on a single forecast. It should use scenarios: What workforce do we need if the gasline advances rapidly? What if several mines enter construction simultaneously? What if disaster-recovery investment accelerates? Where are the skills common across all of those futures?

Those are the people and capabilities we should start building now.

Alaska has a limited workforce, limited training dollars and limited public resources. We need to make each of them work harder.

Train Alaskans for careers, not temporary jobs. Build skills that transfer from project to project. Sequence public investments to reduce destructive boom-and-bust cycles. Share training and infrastructure. Turn temporary construction assets into lasting community assets.

If we actively manage the work ahead rather than simply reacting project by project, we can do more than build infrastructure.

We can use this generation of investment to build stronger Alaska businesses, better Alaska careers, and a more capable and competitive Alaska economy for the generations that follow.