THE ALASKA STORY
Nearly 600,000 Alaskans will begin receiving their 2026 Permanent Fund payments Oct. 1, according to the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend Division. Each eligible resident will receive a $1,000 dividend and a separate $200 energy relief payment, for a total of $1,200.
The first payment run covers Alaskans who filed electronically, requested direct deposit and had an application status of “Eligible-Not Paid” as of Sept. 18. A second run is scheduled for Oct. 22 for applications in that status as of Oct. 12. That run includes both electronic and paper applications, with payments by direct deposit or check. Checks will be mailed from Juneau beginning Oct. 22, so they may arrive later. The division directs applicants to MyPFD to check their status.
The dividend is Alaska’s annual payment to eligible residents from earnings associated with the Permanent Fund. Voters created the fund in 1976 to save a portion of the state’s mineral wealth for future generations, and the first dividends were paid in 1982. What began as a way for Alaskans to share directly in that wealth has also become an important source of money for household expenses, particularly as winter approaches and fuel bills skyrocket.
The $1,000 dividend for 2026 was set by the Legislature in House Bill 263. The additional $200 energy relief payment follows a practice lawmakers have used in some previous years to help with high fuel and utility costs. It may be viewed as an election year vote lure. But even with that supplement, this year’s $1,200 total is far below what Alaska’s dividend formula would have produced.
This year’s dividend is the same as the dividend paid to Alaskans in 1982. If that 1982 payment kept up with inflation, it would be about $3,460 today. Today’s $1,000 has less than $300 in buying power in 1982 dollars.
The ignored formula remains in state law. Estimates considered during this year’s budget debate put a full statutory dividend at about $3,800 per eligible Alaskan. On that estimate, the $1,000 dividend is roughly $2,800 short. Even counting the $200 energy payment, the amount reaching each recipient is about $2,600 less. The $3,800 figure is an estimate, rather than an official dividend calculated and funded under the old formula.
The formula was broken first in 2016, when then-Gov. Bill Walker vetoed roughly half the money appropriated for dividends. The Alaska Supreme Court upheld the veto, ruling that dividend payments require an appropriation and are subject to the governor’s veto. Since then, lawmakers have set the payout through the annual budget process instead of funding the amount produced by the statutory formula. It’s the leftover PFD.
10 thoughts on “Alaska’s $1,200 PFD payments begin Oct. 1, far below amount set by the statutory formula”
“Elect JKT, and there will never be another PFD.”
Alaskans for the loss of the PFD don’t see another elimination after the legislature successfully eliminated the PFD, these same type of legislators will eliminate homeschool allotments and the Alaska performance scholarship.
If this Marxist/Communist group of Alaskans can successfully eliminate the PFD, then it’ll only embolden them to eliminate those two or eliminate AIDEA
You don’t have to go looking for corruption in Alaska. It is right here for all to see.
Where does the money go to you ask? The politicians would say education. The reality is it went to their allies for administrative work, consulting and some scraps make their way into the classroom- which ranks near the very bottom nationwide in reading and math. “Educating the children” is the slogan used as a shield so no one takes a hard look where the money goes or to what purpose. It’s a scam like Decoy Dan or RCV.
How much money did the politicians steal from your family this year? Imagine what they could have done with it.
Nowhere in the law does it say the governor has any veto power at all over the statutory amount of the PFD. Why the courts think there is… is a matter of prudence. Who is getting paid to reduce it? Who gains from the reduction? Why hasn’t anyone with a bit of bank decided to sue over this? We are being ripped off on our statutory dividend every year, and it needs to end.
how much are you personally willing to allow the state government be reduced? if you are employed in a job dependent on government money are you willing to be laid off or find a new job in the private sector? Or that on your community you hear local government, non profit organizations complaining being cut out of the budget? How about the elimination of the Alaska performance Scholarship or the elimination of Homeschool allotments?
Because the reductions of who in the budget is getting money affects the legislators argument they can’t afford to pay out a statutory dividend.
For one thing Alasksn residents with Money to sue. They don’t need a PFD check. Fact is they are the group trying to eliminate the PFD.
The richer Alaskans don’t care about the low income seniors, the single mothers of fatherless children, widows who buried their husbands, poor young adult college students, emancipated teens leaving dysfunctional homes to start life on their own earlier, children and youth whose parents help them invest their PFD’s for college or trade schools,
A “zero-based budget” is the best way to resolve government spending. Advocates of all these programs need to make their cases before the legislature; the legislature needs to prioritize the programs & budgets; then the governor can pull out his red pen and pare it back a little bit more.
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Alas, the special interests flood Juneau with all manner of graft and legislators ultimately line their own pockets. Only a moral society can affect this change. That we ever got to this point, is sufficient evidence of the lack of morality.
Yes. Problem is that Alaskans refuse any cuts to the budget. The bigger problem the illiterates who argue the PFD is nothing but a welfare check, don’t understand the reason why government is running a deficit is because of Government is too big and spending more money on government employees and services than the private sector growth can keep up. The problem thing is these proponents for its elimination, their communist/marxist leaders won’t be happy until Alaska’s Constitution Reserve and PFD are completely gone. Before they can really control a place or people, they have to take away its independence. It’s why Welfare people never get ahead because the system is designed they can’t save money or make nest eggs. The recipients have a poor education that they rather live for the highest public assistance amount than to see it decreased and eliminated because of they are earning more or they have been saving.
But remember there is hope wherever one can find a bible and they truly seek wisdom and knowledge that only comes from God, Who will judge all things said and unsaid at the end of a life.
I don’t know if many people today really want to change or even recognize they need to change when I remember Baby boomers in their younger years were just as narcissistic as they are starting to realize now as they are looking at a frailer, older, and nearer death boomer. They raised GenX and Millennials they don’t need God. That they can do anything as long as they have the will for it. Most GenXers and Millennials learned the narcisstic traits of their boomer parents and passing those on to many GenZers and GenAlphas. One of the social issues about people who have narcisstic traits is they don’t listen to others especially to those holding a contrary opinion. Even then when harder times do arrive people will still not learn the lesson from their failed wrong choices but only live a life in constant euphoria and nolstagia for the past before communism and Marxist like look at how Russians in their younger years 1970’s lived under the USSR. Their liberals who gave away their power to communism/marxist leaders, they lived in a state of euphoria and nostalgia for pre-USSR time. They never learned their lessons. They just checked out of reality. For millennials, and GenX to been raised by a narcissist baby boomer generation I don’t think my generation has the mental capability to get out of the mental entrapment of narcissism. The only Savior to a narcissist is a Supernatural Jesus encounter to show the man is not author of his destiny to show he is not god of his world to show he nothing but dust and dust he was made from and dust he’ll return.
The hope is God’s Word is ageless and eternal it never changes. No matter how bleak our times move into there is always going to be people even the most narcissistic worse of the worse sinners repenting and being saved by Christ and a little bit mighty Church that prays and works.
Probably the only people who’ll benefit under the poor choices of voters who bring a big government by pro communist/marxist leaders is The Church without buildings or temples. Because Faith and a relationship with God strengthens firmer and stronger when faced by persecution, and the faces of The Church grow more lovelier, brighter, and their love deepens to help and sacrifice further, their wisdom, discernment, and knowledge sharpens, their self control and patience is stretched out longer because of the persecution.
When your direct deposit is make, be sure to genuflect and prostrate yourself toward Juneau (legislative Mecca)
You know “they” are watching!
There is a case being started by MUST READ AK and you can contact Natalie Spaulding to provide the link. The question on the link is “When you have received a dividend, how did you use your portion? I spent mine divided between Christmas and gardening costs,young adult friend used it to pay his rent and gas.