Oahu roads funnel about 112,000 residents into urban Honolulu daily for work, according to a state analysis of U.S. Census data that shows where jobs and residences intersect on the island.
Seven places on Oahu — urban Honolulu, Ko Olina, Laie, Haleiwa and three military bases — receive a net influx in their daytime resident population because jobs there attract more workers who live in other communities.
On the flip side, most Oahu residents commuting to work leave East Honolulu, Pearl City, Ewa Gentry, Mililani Mauka and Mililani town — dramatically reducing the daytime resident population in those big communities, the data shows.
Large numbers also commute from Makakilo, Waipahu, Kailua, Royal Kunia and Kaneohe.
The research and economic analysis division of the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism organized data from the Census Bureau’s 2009-2013 American Community Survey into charts and maps illustrating big and small divisions of where people live and work on Oahu among 45 Census-designated places.
According to DBEDT’s breakdown, Ko Olina receives the biggest increase in daytime population on a percentage basis, with a 75 percent gain that represents 1,484 people. The data also show that only 8.8 percent of Ko Olina’s 1,967 residents work where they live.
In urban Honolulu the 340,639 people who live there are joined by another 111,692 people commuting to the area for work during the day, representing a 33 percent gain. About 84 percent of people living in urban Honolulu also work in the area stretching roughly from the airport to Kahala.
Schofield Barracks, an Army base in Central Oahu, had the next-highest percentage of people who live and work in the same place, at 60.9 percent.
The lowest percentage of residents who work where they live was 2.5 percent for Waikele, the report said.
On a percentage basis, the biggest exodus of residents leaving where they live to work elsewhere occurs in Windward Oahu’s Ahuimanu area (near Valley of the Temples Memorial Park), where the daytime population decreases by 50.9 percent. That figure represents a decline of 4,433 people.
In terms of volume, the biggest reductions in daytime resident populations occur in East Honolulu at 17,733, followed by Pearl City at 11,492. Another 10,720 depart Ewa Gentry, along with 9,560 from Mililani Mauka and 9,275 from Mililani town.
