By: James Brooks, Alaska Beacon

Gov. Mike Dunleavy on Monday lifted a statewide executive branch hiring freeze, removing restrictions on managers who had been required since May 2025 to obtain special permission before hiring new state employees. 

The governor’s decision was revealed without fanfare in a new administrative order that took effect Monday.

This week’s order also repealed a freeze on new state regulations and on state employee travel. Both of those restrictions, and the hiring freeze, had been imposed by the same administrative order last year. 

At the time, Dunleavy cited concerns over state spending, and his actions were similar to ones he took during the COVID-19 pandemic emergency. Both moves mimicked action by former Gov. Bill Walker during a mid-2010s slump in state oil revenue.

Since Dunleavy’s 2025 order, the state’s fiscal situation has improved because of the Iran war. Alaska North Slope oil is worth significantly more than it was last year, and the state has now had consecutive fiscal years with a budget surplus.

Jeff Turner, the governor’s communications director, said on Tuesday that no one from the administration was available to speak about the repeal of the freeze order. 

While state agencies have been able to continue working amid the regulation freeze, it has nonetheless had various effects on operations.

On Tuesday, for example, the Regulatory Commission of Alaska announced that it was unable to allow the state’s electric utilities to buy more home-produced solar power. 

The commission said it had requested a waiver of the regulations freeze in order to proceed but did not receive it, and thus utilities cannot buy as much solar power as they desired.

The hiring freeze has coincided with a general decline in the number of people employed by the state. In August, according to the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development, the state had 23,500 workers. That’s down from 24,800 in April 2025, the month before the hiring freeze. 

Doug Carson is the lead business agent for the Alaska State Employees Association, Alaska’s largest union for state workers.

“Hiring freezes … they’re a lot more PR stunts than they have any actual dramatic impact in terms of hiring,” he said by phone. 

“It doesn’t stop hiring completely, but the one serious impact I think it has is it affects recruitment and retention. People are less inclined to apply for state jobs because they see a hiring freeze is on,” he said.

Carson said he also believes that a hiring freeze encourages state agencies to outsource jobs to private contractors. One example: The state’s Division of Public Assistance, which is working through a large backlog of applications and has continued to contract out much of the work to a company in Massachusetts.

“We think that money belongs in state, in Alaskans’ pockets,” Carson said.

Heidi Drygas, president of the Alaska AFL-CIO, said that while she sees the lifting of the hiring freeze as “a step in the right direction,” it doesn’t fix pre-existing problems in state agencies.

“Things were already pretty bad and pretty rough from department to department in terms of vacancy rates and burnout and just general working conditions, and the freeze just made it worse,” she said.

“It’s going to be for the next administration to deal with, just like a whole host of problems that this administration is leaving for the next governor,” Drygas said.