The U.S. military pumped up to $12.2 billion into Hawaii in 2009 — or more than 18 percent of total spending in the islands, according to the first study of its kind in nearly 50 years, scheduled for release today.

The full-time equivalent of 91,000 to 101,000 employees worked for the military here between 2007 and 2009, representing 16 percent of the work force in the state, said the RAND National Defense Research Institute’s report, "How Much Does Military Spending Add to Hawaii’s Economy?"

Active-duty personnel earned an annual median income of $74,900.

The report is the first of its kind in Hawaii since 1963 and was commissioned by the Hawaii Institute for Public Affairs, an independent, nonpartisan organization, in partnership with the Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii.

The report captures a snapshot of military spending between 2007 and 2009, when Hawaii had a 2009 gross domestic product valued at $66.4 billion.

Jim Hosek, senior economist at the California-based RAND Corp. and editor of the Rand Journal of Economics, and his research team found reports from individual branches of the military in Hawaii, but none that looked at all of them in the same time frame.

"The only previous literature looking at the full impact of defense spending was a study done in 1963," Hosek said. "We wanted a precise estimate of the role of defense spending on Hawaii’s economy. We found that it’s conservatively one-sixth of the gross state product and perhaps even more, on the order of one-fifth of full-time employment."

The study does not put military spending in context with other economic sectors, specifically tourism and agriculture, which used to comprise the three "legs" of Hawaii’s economy, along with the military.

"This project was meant to measure the economic impact of the military in Hawaii," said Jim Tollefson, president and chief executive officer of the Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii. "It wasn’t intended to compare it to other sources of economic impact to the state," he said.

"It does confirm our belief that the impact of the Department of Defense spending in Hawaii was strong. This just validated, and expanded on, our belief all along."

Agriculture, specifically sugar, has plummeted since the early 1990s, while tourism remains Hawaii’s No. 1 industry, said Leroy Laney, a Hawaii Pacific University professor of economics and finance.

The military’s role in the islands also has diminished since World War II but remains a reliable economic driver, Laney said.

"It’s not nearly as cyclical as other components of the economy," Laney said. "Construction is always up and down and fairly volatile, and tourism has its ups and downs. There are times when the military feels the effects of deployment … but you know they are eventually going to come back."

During the three years of the study, RAND found that defense procurements in Hawaii doubled since the mid-1990s to $2.3 billion. The bulk of the procurements — $2.16 billion — was concentrated on Oahu.

The majority of military procurement spending here was in four areas: construction ($787 million); professional, scientific and technical ($457 million); administrative and support services ($192 million); and petroleum- and coal-products manufacturing ($176 million).

Through the last several years, the state’s civilian construction industry has seen a boom in military projects, said John White, executive director of Pacific Resource Partnership, an advocacy group for Hawaii’s unionized carpenters and contractors.

Every dollar spent on a military construction site flows at least six times through Hawaii’s economy, White said, and "helps at the military level, the construction level and helps the local economy."

Overall, White said, "Military construction spending has been a stabilizing force for the construction industry, particularly military housing, where we’ve had billions of dollars spent and thousands of jobs created. With improvements to army facilities, barracks, support facilities and the construction of battle area complexes for additional training, it’s been a nice blend of modernizing the military, improving housing conditions for our troops and providing civilian jobs."

On the Net:

» The RAND National Defense Research Institute report "How Much Does Military Spending Add to Hawaii’s Economy?" will be available online today at about noon at www.cochawaii.org and www.hipaonline.com.