A summary is below. More details are available on our State Employment Page.

January 22, 2019

Summary

• Hawaii added 1,100 jobs and the unemployment rate increased by 0.1 percentage point to 2.5 percent in December according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data.

• Over the past twelve months, Hawaii added 9,500 jobs and the unemployment rate rose by 0.4 percentage point from 2.1 percent.

• In December, Hawaii's private sector added 2,500 jobs and over the past twelve months, it created 8,900 jobs.

• The number of unemployed Hawaii residents rose by 539 in December, and over the past year, 1,677 Hawaii residents lost jobs.

• Hawaii’s labor force participation rate decreased to 62.4 percent from 62.5 percent in December.  Since last year, the labor force participation rate rose 0.1 percentage point.

• The national unemployment rate rose by 0.2 percentage point to 3.9 percent in December.  State employment and unemployment data for January is scheduled for release on March 11, 2019.  The national employment situation report for January will be released on Friday, February 1, 2019.