For the past several years, the Alaska seafood processing sector has faced a labor shortage, particularly when it comes to hiring thousands of processing workers required for the summer salmon season.
And this year is not looking much different, despite a major increase in the number of visas available to hire foreign workers. For the full 2023 fiscal year, the US government has made 64,716 H-2B temporary nonagricultural worker visas available to US employers, an 85 percent increase from last year's allocation.
