In some ways, Hawaiʻi’s economy appears to have recovered very well from the pandemic: visitor arrivals are at near record highs, tax collections are up, and unemployment is down. But for most working families, living in Hawaiʻi has become less affordable than ever. 

How have jobs, wages and costs changed from before the COVID pandemic compared to after? The following charts show changes from 2019 to 2022 that have affected livability for most Hawaiʻi residents.

Changes in Jobs and Wages, 2019–2022

Hawaiʻi lost more than 40,000 jobs between 2019 and 2022. Although the biggest decrease was in the number and proportion of jobs that pay less than $20 per hour, low wage jobs still remain dominant in the islands.

Figures 1–3. The number of jobs in Hawaiʻi shrank by 6 percent between 2019 and 2022. The biggest change was among jobs that pay less than $20 per hour. These accounted for 58 percent of all positions in 2019, but nearly 130,000 such jobs disappeared between 2019 and 2022. Nonetheless, the less-than-$20 per hour segment still made up a hefty 40 percent of all Hawaiʻi jobs in 2022. As labor shortages pushed up hourly rates for many lower wage jobs, the category of  jobs paying between $20 and $30 per hour grew the most. The smallest category continues to be jobs with average pay of $40 or more per hour, but such positions increased by 41 percent.

Figure 4 shows how the number of positions and median wages for the lowest paid occupations changed between 2019 and 2022. Each of these jobs had a median wage of less than $20 per hour in 2019. Note that only Food Prep and Serving occupations saw a reduction in median hourly wages. Median pay for positions in Office and Administrative Support and Production/Manufacturing was less than $20 per hour in 2019 but had increased to more than $21/hour by 2022. Not included on the chart are positions in Farming and Fishing. These account for a very small number of jobs, but increased from 870 to 1,680 in number while median wages grew by only 10 cents per hour.

Figures 5 shows that median hourly wages made greater gains for the U.S. on average than they did in Hawai'i.

Inflation and the Cost of Living, 2019-2022

Hawaiʻi is the most expensive place to live in the United States and the affordability gap increased between 2019 and 2022. The following figures show changes in both the Cost of Living Index, which measures changes in the amount consumers need to support household costs, and the Consumer Price Index, which measures changes in prices for various household purchases and expenses.

Figure 6 shows that the cost of living grew faster in Honolulu than the national average. While median wages increased more than the cost of living for the U.S. overall, the opposite was true for Honolulu. Note that wages reflect changes between 2019 and 2022 while the cost of living reflects changes from 2018-19 and 2021-22.

Figure 7 shows the overall increase in median wages between 2019 and 2022 compared with price inflation for Honolulu for the same period.

The cost to buy a home, already beyond the reach of most working families, significantly during the pandemic. Figure 8 shows how the price to purchase a house escalated between 2019 and 2022. The average increase for the U.S. was greater than for the state, but prices for condominiums were much higher for Hawai'i County, single family home prices were much higher for Kauai County, and both were higher for Maui County.

Rents, in comparison, increased by a smaller percentage but by more than than did wages in all counties but Honolulu. Figure 9 shows the percentage increase in fair market rents by county, and Figure 10 shows the increase in dollars.

Data sources:

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

• Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, State of Hawaiʻi, and Urban Honolulu

• Consumer Expenditures for the Honolulu Metropolitan Area, 2018–19 and 2021–22

• Consumer Price Index, Honolulu Area and U.S. City Average

• U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD User Fair Market Rents Documentation System, 2019 and 2022

• Hawaiʻi State Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, Occupational Employment and Wages, 2019

• Hawaiʻi State Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism Data Book, 2022, Table 21.36

• Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Economic Research