Seafood processing connects harvests to the food served in coastal communities. NOAA data show a sector with thousands of U.S. firms, more than 31,000 employer-processing jobs in the measured years, and substantial activity among both employer and non-employer businesses. The figures below also show why a downturn in Alaska can affect employment, output, and tax revenue far beyond individual processing plants.
Contents
- U.S. business counts and receipts
- Employer establishments, jobs, and payroll
- Coastal-state employment in 2019
- Non-employer activity by state
- What the Alaska downturn changed
- Local and Pacific Northwest effects
U.S. business counts and receipts
The seafood preparation and packaging industry includes businesses that operate without paid employees as well as employer establishments. Keeping those categories separate matters: a non-employer firm count is not the same measure as an employer establishment count, and non-employer receipts are not employer payroll.
NOAA’s Fisheries Economics of the United States 2020 reported 1,757 U.S. non-employer seafood product preparation and packaging firms in 2011. The count rose to 1,947 firms in 2014 and 2,289 firms in 2018. Those observations describe the number of firms in the applicable annual economic tables, not a current-year estimate. Fisheries Economics of the United States 2020
The same NOAA source reported non-employer receipts of $110.745 million in 2011, $163.625 million in 2015, and $188.774 million in 2018. The source tables report these receipts in thousands of dollars; the amounts here are expressed in millions for readability. The receipt years are not identical to all of the firm-count years, so they should be read as separate observations rather than a continuous annual series.
| Measure | Earlier observation | Later observation |
|---|---|---|
| Non-employer firms | 1,757 (2011) | 2,289 (2018) |
| Non-employer receipts | $110.745 million (2011) | $188.774 million (2018) |
| Employer establishments | 620 (2011) | 560 (2019) |
| Employer jobs | 31,261 (2011) | 31,026 (2019) |
| Employer payroll | $1.200263 billion (2011) | $1.554431 billion (2019) |
The table places the major national observations side by side, but it does not imply that every measure follows the same time path. In particular, the non-employer receipt series includes a 2015 observation, while the employer series ends with a 2019 observation in the supplied FEUS tables.
Employer establishments, jobs, and payroll
U.S. employer seafood product preparation and packaging had 620 establishments in 2011 and 560 establishments in 2019, according to NOAA. Over that same pair of benchmark years, employment moved from 31,261 people to 31,026 people. The establishment and employment counts therefore describe a large employer-based workforce even as the reported number of establishments was lower in 2019.
Employer payroll was $1.200263 billion in 2011 and $1.554431 billion in 2019. NOAA reports payroll in thousands of dollars in the underlying source tables. These are nominal reported payroll totals; the supplied data do not provide an inflation adjustment or an explanation of how payroll changed between the two benchmark years.
Together, the establishment, job, and payroll observations provide three different views of the processing workforce. Establishments describe operating employer locations, jobs describe the people employed by those establishments, and payroll describes the total compensation measure reported in the tables. None of these figures is a direct measure of seafood volume, dockside value, restaurant sales, or household consumption.
For a coastal cooking business, that distinction is useful. Processing statistics describe an important part of the supply chain, but they do not by themselves identify which species were handled, how much product reached a particular market, or what consumers paid. The statistics are best used as economic context for the people and businesses moving seafood from harvest to market.
Coastal-state employment in 2019
The FEUS state rows are for 2019 unless otherwise stated. NOAA counted 39 employer seafood-processing establishments in California, 35 in Maine, and 30 in Texas. Oregon, Washington, Florida, and Louisiana each had 25 establishments. Alabama had 19, while Mississippi had 17.
Employment did not simply mirror the establishment ranking. Maine reported 2,204 processing employees, and Mississippi reported 2,462, the largest employment figure among the states listed here despite Mississippi’s 17 establishments. Florida and Louisiana each reported 1,946 employees. California reported 1,691, Oregon and Washington each reported 1,110, Alabama reported 1,105, and Texas reported 985.
| State | Employer establishments | Processing employees | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| California | 39 | 1,691 | 2019 |
| Maine | 35 | 2,204 | 2019 |
| Texas | 30 | 985 | 2019 |
| Oregon | 25 | 1,110 | 2019 |
| Washington | 25 | 1,110 | 2019 |
| Florida | 25 | 1,946 | 2019 |
| Louisiana | 25 | 1,946 | 2019 |
| Alabama | 19 | 1,105 | 2019 |
| Mississippi | 17 | 2,462 | 2019 |
These state rows illustrate why establishment counts alone can be misleading. Mississippi’s 17 establishments corresponded to 2,462 employees, while Texas’s 30 establishments corresponded to 985 employees. The supplied data do not explain differences in establishment size, seasonality, product mix, or operating schedules, so no cause should be assigned to those contrasts from these figures alone.
Non-employer activity by state
Non-employer seafood preparation and packaging also had a distinct regional footprint in 2018. California counted 181 non-employer firms with $13.928 million in receipts. Washington counted 56 firms with $5.096 million in receipts. Florida counted 287 firms with $21.888 million in receipts.
Florida’s 287 firms were the largest firm count among these three state observations, and its $21.888 million in receipts was also the largest reported total. California’s 181 firms and $13.928 million in receipts formed the middle observation in both measures. Washington’s 56 firms and $5.096 million in receipts were lower on both measures. These are 2018 non-employer observations, not employer counts and not 2019 state employer figures.
The national and state non-employer data also answer different questions. National observations show 2,289 firms and $188.774 million in receipts in 2018, while the three selected state rows show how that broad total was distributed among California, Washington, and Florida. The data supplied here do not include every coastal state’s non-employer row, so the three-state comparison is not a complete state ranking.
What the Alaska downturn changed
NOAA’s Alaska Seafood Snapshot describes a severe seafood-industry downturn from 2022 to 2023. Alaska ex-vessel seafood revenues fell 32 percent, or $617 million, between those years. First-wholesale seafood values fell $1.2 billion, or 26 percent, over the same period. The snapshot also reports that ex-vessel profitability declined 50 percent from 2021 to 2023.
The Alaska revenue figures require careful interpretation. NOAA describes the 2023 revenue values as preliminary, nowcast, or preliminary first-wholesale estimates as applicable. The first-wholesale measure follows primary processing and may include later secondary processing. These are therefore estimates and preliminary measures in the described context, not final plant-only accounting totals. Alaska Seafood Snapshot
The reported downstream effects were national in scope. NOAA estimated more than 38,000 fishing and non-fishing job losses in the United States, a $4.3 billion reduction in total U.S. output, and a $269 million reduction in state and local tax revenues during the 2022–2023 downturn. The job figure includes fishing and non-fishing jobs, while the output and tax figures describe broader economic effects. They should not be read as seafood-processing plant counts alone.
Alaska seafood processing and fishing imported approximately one-third of its inputs from other regions. That supply-chain connection helps explain why a shock centered in Alaska could be associated with effects outside Alaska, although the supplied data do not identify each imported input or assign a separate effect to individual suppliers.
Local and Pacific Northwest effects
The Alaska snapshot estimated that seafood-industry output decreased by $573 million in Aleutians East Borough and by $404 million in Bristol Bay Borough between 2022 and 2023. It estimated seafood-industry employment decreases of 6,036 jobs in Aleutians East Borough and 9,713 jobs in Bristol Bay Borough.
The workforce in these communities also had a strong nonresident component. In 2022, non-Alaska residents made up 83 percent of processing workers in Aleutians East Borough and 92 percent of processing workers in Bristol Bay Borough. Those percentages describe processing workers in the named boroughs for 2022, not all Alaska workers and not a national workforce share.
The effects reached other Pacific states as well. Washington, Oregon, and California together experienced a $680 million decrease in seafood-industry output and a 3,770-job decrease in seafood-industry employment from 2022 to 2023, according to the Alaska Seafood Snapshot. Those combined estimates are downstream context connected to the Alaska downturn; they are not replacements for the separate 2019 employer-processing counts reported in FEUS.
For readers following seafood from harbor to kitchen, the overall pattern is clear in the measurements: seafood processing spans employer plants, non-employer firms, seasonal and mobile workforces, and interconnected regional economies. The national FEUS tables provide establishment, employment, payroll, firm, and receipt benchmarks, while the Alaska snapshot shows how a period of falling revenues and wholesale values can transmit through jobs, output, and public revenue across multiple states.