The Data Are In: Alaska Doesn’t Need Defined-Benefit Pensions to Keep Teachers in the Classroom or troopers on the Streets

For years, public employee unions and some legislators have repeated the same line: Alaska’s workforce crisis began the day we closed the old defined-benefit (DB) pension plan in 2006, and the only fix is to reopen that system and promise lifetime payouts on the backs of taxpayers. They claim that’s the only way to keep teachers in classrooms, troopers in uniform, and police and firefighters on the job. But the truth has always been harder than the slogan. And now, thanks to a brand-new working paper and study published just three months ago by the University of Alaska’s Institute of Social and Economic Research, we finally have the data to prove it.

The study, “Recruitment, Retention, and Retirement Plan Structure: Evidence from Teachers,” by Noah Burke and Brock Wilson (August 2025), is the cleanest natural experiment in the country. When Alaska moved new hires to a defined-contribution (DC) retirement plan on July 1, 2006, it created two nearly identical groups; teachers hired just before the cutoff with DB pensions, and teachers hired just after with DC accounts. The result? A perfect test of what really happens when you change the pension structure.

And the verdict is unmistakable: nothing changed.

Across every measurable category, the researchers found no statistically significant difference between the two systems:

• The number of new teachers hired didn’t change.
• The average age of new hires dropped slightly, then disappeared in later checks.
• Experience levels stayed the same.
• Starting salaries stayed the same.
• Retention after one year, six years, nine years, and fourteen years—no difference at all.

Even when the authors drilled down into subgroups such as STEM teachers, early-career teachers, and older hires, the result held. The switch from DB to DC made no difference in recruitment or retention.

If defined-benefit pensions were truly the secret weapon unions claim, the evidence would be obvious. Instead, it shows the opposite. The defined-contribution system has performed just as well, without the risk of bankrupting the state.

Unions like NEA-Alaska and the AFL-CIO continue to insist that “in 2006 the Legislature stripped public employees of a defined-benefit pension, and as a result Alaska has struggled to recruit and retain a qualified workforce.” That claim is now demonstrably false. Teacher hiring and retention trends that began before 2006 simply continued afterward. The pension structure was never the driving factor.

Teachers themselves confirm it. In the state’s 2022 TRS member survey, defined-contribution tier members ranked “switch me back to a defined-benefit pension” dead last among incentives that would keep them in the classroom, far behind higher pay, better health care, and more planning time.

We already owe nearly $7 billion in unfunded liabilities from the old pension system which is roughly $46,000 per Alaskan. Reopening a new DB tier would pile billions more in guaranteed promises on future generations and threaten the Permanent Fund as the inevitable funding backstop.

If the teacher data are any indication, the same logic almost certainly applies to public safety employees like troopers, corrections officers, firefighters, and police officers, who are constantly used as emotional leverage in this debate. Yet here’s the key difference: there is no credible, peer-reviewed research to support the claim that Alaska can’t recruit or retain first responders without a return to the old pension system. None. They won’t even publish the exit surveys.

No one has conducted for troopers, police, or fire what Burke and Wilson have now done for teachers: a rigorous, data-driven comparison of what actually happened before and after the 2006 reform. Why not? Don’t they want us to know? That study should serve as the model for every future conversation on public employee retention. Before we saddle the Alaska budget with another multi-billion-dollar defined-benefit liability, we must demand hard data, not anecdotes.

If we truly want to attract and keep qualified teachers, troopers, police officers, and firefighters, let’s focus on what actually works. Raise starting pay, especially in rural and high-cost areas. Fix the broken health-care cost spiral that is draining take-home pay. And improve the existing defined-contribution plan by holding underperforming investment managers accountable, something the Alaska Retirement Management Board itself has already admitted must happen.

Bringing back defined-benefit pensions would be the most expensive way imaginable to accomplish nothing. It would create new risks, new liabilities, and no measurable benefit for recruitment or retention. The evidence is clear: the pension structure is not the problem.

I encourage every union leader, every member of NEA-Alaska, every police and fire association, and every legislator still considering a return to defined-benefit pensions to read the Burke and Wilson study for themselves. The data are in, and the debate is over. Alaska taxpayers deserve better than another nostalgic, multi-billion-dollar promise that won’t put one more teacher in a classroom, one more trooper on the road, or one more firefighter in the station.

Originally published on Substack: https://kevinjmccabe.substack.com/p/golden-handcuffs