Hawaii jobless rate holds at 3% for seventh straight month
Hawaii's job market continues to be a picture of consistency.
The state's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in January held at 3.0 % for the seventh straight month after six consecutive months at 2.9 %, according to data released Friday by the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.
'The unemployment rate indicates that the Hawaii labor market is stable, ' Chief Economist Eugene Tian of DBEDT said in an email. 'More people have now joined the labor force, and the labor force participation rate improved from 59.8 % in January 2024 to 60.1 % in January 2025.'
During the seven-month period from July through January, the labor force, employment and unemployment have all been stable, Tian said. However, he noted that there are not many new hires occurring in the state.
'This indicates that our businesses are losing momentum, ' Tian said. 'This may not be a good thing, especially many of our industries are still recovering from the COVID-19 recession, such as tourism.'
DBEDT's latest jobless figures were revised due to the annual benchmark revision of employment statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. DBEDT earlier had reported monthly unemployment rates of 2.9 %—rather than 3.0 %—through the back half of 2024.
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Tian said the purpose of benchmarking is to correct sampling errors of the monthly data due to lagging information, and to continue to produce future monthly data based on the revised historical monthly data to make the new monthly data more accurate.
Hawaii's labor force, which includes those who are employed, those who are unemployed but actively seeking work and those who are self-employed, increased to 683, 250 in January from 682, 300 in December.
Those employed rose to 662, 850 from 661, 600, while the number of people unemployed decreased to 20, 400 from 20, 700. However, the number of people unemployed was 500 higher than it was in January 2024.
Nationally, the unemployment rate was 4.0 % in January, down from 4.1 % in December.
Nonfarm payrolls, calculated from a mail survey of employers, fell from the previous month but were up from a year ago. Jobs decreased by 500 in January from December, with leisure and hospitality showing the largest drop with 1, 100 lost positions. However, year over year, nonfarm jobs increased by 9, 900, or 1.6 %.
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate was mixed in the state's four major counties from the previous month. State and national labor force data is adjusted for seasonal factors, but the county jobs data is not seasonally adjusted and thus does not take into account variations such as the winter holiday and summer vacation seasons.
Honolulu County's rate held at 2.6 %, and Hawaii County remained at 3.1 %. Kauai County's rate declined to 2.5 % from 2.7 %, and Maui County's rate fell to 3.4 % from 3.5 %. Within Maui County, Maui's rate fell to 3.4 % from 3.5 %, and Molokai's rate decreased to 3.2 % from 3.4 %. Lanai's rate rose to 3.5 % from 2.6 %.
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