Corporate 100 executive summary.

• Author: Anderson, Tasha
• Position: Company rankings - Cover story

Welcome to Alaska Business Monthly's revamped Corporate 100. For more than thirty years we've had the pleasure of honoring our Top 49ers, business that are at least 51 percent Alaskan-owned ranked by revenue; over the years we've "lost" companies as they've expanded beyond those qualifications, often demonstrating their value as they're purchased by international companies or transition to have national or even international shareholders. Alaska's economy is a big picture, and our Corporate 100 has been designed to capture yet another view. This year our Corporate 100 is comprised of any company that has at least one physical Alaska location and is willing to divulge their number of Alaska employees, the only criteria by which they are ranked.

A few notes on our data: All of the employee numbers enclosed here are self-reported. Because the number of employees that any company has, especially large companies, can be fluid and because many of the largest industries in Alaska are seasonal by nature, employee counts can fluctuate drastically depending on the time of year--to level the playing field as much as possible, Alaska Business Monthly asked these organizations to report their peak number of employees. If companies tied by number of Alaska Employees, their rank in the list was then determined by year established in Alaska.

Top Employers

For the 2016 Corporate 100, our number one slot goes to NANA Regional Corporation, Inc., which reported 5,000 Alaska employees. That's one third of their worldwide total of 15,000 employees. NANA has ten subsidiaries in Alaska, and many more outside in the Lower 48 and in Australia, which provide the gamut of support services in various industries including the federal government.

Alaska Native organizations are also the largest industry sector represented in the Corporate 100, with 13,739 Alaska employees between the twelve regional and village organizations represented here. This represents approximately 25 percent of their worldwide workforce of 53,203. Altogether they employ 20.3 percent of our Corporate 100 list. While the Alaska Native organizations are treated in the Corporate 100 (and in the Top 49ers) as their own sector of industry, in reality they provide almost every kind of service in Alaska, ranging from healthcare to travel to natural resource extraction support services.

The next business sector is Retail/Wholesale trade, accounting for 15.2 percent of Alaska employees. In total these ten...