Businesses in Alaska: 22,178 employers, the license every business needs and who owns them

This page is for anyone looking for, checking or counting businesses in Alaska: residents vetting a contractor, people starting a company, suppliers hunting for customers, and B2B sellers working out whether a market this size and this spread out is worth the trip. It starts with how to look a business up, then gives the counts by borough, sector and ownership.

How to look up a business in Alaska

Alaska's rule is simple: under AS 43.70.020, a person must obtain a state business license "for the privilege of engaging in a business in the state." The fee is $50 a year, or $25 for a sole proprietor who is 65 or older or a disabled veteran (AS 43.70.030), and one license covers all of a firm's establishments in a line of business. Knowingly operating without one can bring a civil fine of up to $300.

The division's search pages are on commerce.alaska.gov; its site turned away our automated checks, so search it directly in a browser. Because nearly every operating business needs a state license, a business with no current license is the first thing to question, whether you're hiring a contractor or qualifying a lead.

How many businesses are in Alaska

The Census Bureau's County Business Patterns (CBP) for Alaska, all sectors, 2023:

That's 19,729 establishments with 1 to 19 employees, 2,081 with 20 to 99 and 368 with 100 or more. CBP counts locations with paid employees, not companies; it excludes the self-employed, many of Alaska's commercial fishing crews among them, and government, and it measures employment in the pay period including March 12, 2023.

Who owns Alaska's businesses

CBP's state file also splits establishments by legal form of organization:

Shares are our calculation. The typical Alaska business is a small S corporation, averaging 7.6 employees per establishment; C corporations average 26.5. Nonprofits employ more people than all the state's partnerships put together.

Where Alaska's businesses are

Anchorage has 39.7% of the establishments and 53.6% of private employees. The North Slope Borough, home of the Prudhoe Bay oil fields, has only 145 establishments, but they average 29.8 employees.

What Alaska businesses do

Average pay is our calculation from CBP payroll. Construction pays 41% more than the state average, and heavy and civil engineering construction (NAICS 237) averages $155,089. Air transportation's 201 establishments reflect how much of the state lies off the road system.

Government, the military and Native corporations

CBP leaves out the public sector, which is unusually large here. On the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development's figures, the state averaged 337,800 nonfarm jobs in 2025, of which 79,500 (23.5%) were in government: 15,200 federal, 24,200 state and 40,100 local. The department forecasts 3,000 more jobs in 2026, led by oil and gas, health care, construction and transportation. Its August 2026 analysis found Alaska lost about 4.5% of its federal jobs in 2025, nearly 700, putting it third among the most affected states; it counts 10,223 active-duty military in Anchorage and 9,501 in the Fairbanks North Star Borough.

The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act created 12 Alaska Native regional corporations, private companies owned by their shareholders. The ANCSA Regional Association lists them: Ahtna, The Aleut Corporation, Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, Bristol Bay Native Corporation, Bering Straits Native Corporation, Calista, Chugach Alaska, Cook Inlet Region (CIRI), Doyon, Koniag, NANA and Sealaska. They don't file 10-Ks, so they're missing from the public company list below, but no list of Alaska's significant private businesses is complete without them.

Public companies headquartered in Alaska

That's the whole list. Northrim's figure is its $135.6 million of net interest income plus $77.2 million of other operating income, not its $178.4 million of interest income. Alaska Air Group, the name most people expect, gives Seattle as its principal executive office on its 10-K.

Prospecting Alaska's heavy civil contractors

Illustrative example. The company, prices and results are fictional; the counts are from CBP 2023.

Tundra Link (tundralink.example) rents satellite internet kits to remote job sites.

• Heavy and civil engineering construction establishments (NAICS 237) with 10 to 99 employees: 33 + 14 + 8 = 55, plus 4 with 100 to 249: 59 in all.
• It assumes 40% run projects off the road system each season: about 24 contractors.
• Signing 8 at $18,000 per season is $144,000.

The buyer is the owner or the project manager, and the window is late winter, when crews and equipment for the summer season are being booked. Working out which of the 59 have remote projects this year is account research that Bebop does for each contractor in the list.

Subject: Connectivity at [Company]'s summer sites

Hi [first name],

When a crew is a flight away from town, a dead connection means paper timesheets, late safety reports and change orders that wait a week.

We rent satellite internet kits sized for remote Alaska camps, shipped before breakup and picked up at freeze-up, with one price per site per season. Would a quote for this summer's projects be useful?

[Your name], Tundra Link

Next step: for the state's biggest private industry, see oil and gas companies in Alaska.