Jobless rate at its lowest in 10 years

Car rental company Hertz is having such a hard time finding workers in Hawaii that it is offering a $6,000 bonus to new hires who stay at least eight months.

ALTRES Staffing, the state’s largest employee placement company, has more than 100 openings statewide.

Finding good help now could get even tougher after the state unemployment rate in August dipped one-tenth of a point to 2.6 percent, its lowest level in more than 10 years.

“The lower unemployment rate is not surprising at all,” said Eugene Tian, chief economist for the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. “It indicates the economy is still doing great.”

The last time the seasonally adjusted rate was this low was in April 2007, according to data released Thursday by the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations. Since the start of this year, the jobless rate has hovered in the narrow range of 2.7 to 2.8 percent.

DBEDT forecast last month that the economy will grow at a slower pace than previously projected for the rest of the year and through 2020. Tian said Thursday that DBEDT hasn’t changed that projection.

“Our forecast is that the unemployment rate number will be going up,” he said. “It may happen before the end of the year.”

For now, though, the unemployment rate is among the lowest in the nation. At 2.6 percent, that would place Hawaii at No. 3 if the jobless rates in July for North Dakota (2.2 percent) and Colorado (2.4 percent) don’t increase substantially. The U.S. Labor Department will release the unemployment rates of all the states today.

Christine Vo, regional recruiter for Hertz, said the company offered potential employees in Hawaii a $2,000 retention bonus 1-1/2 years ago before subsequently increasing the incentive to $4,000. In May it was increased again to $6,000 if a new hire stays at least eight months.

“When I first started four years ago, we had a lot of candidates we had to weed through,” she said. “We were able to select the best of the best. Our concentration now is just getting applicants. We don’t have the flow that we used to.”

Hertz, which will participate in the Career Expo on Oct. 1 from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at Windward Mall, has 92 openings statewide from hourly up to management.

“We have to do a lot of outside-of-the-box strategic thinking in terms of how to get candidates through the door,” Vo said of the retention bonus.

ALTRES Staffing, which has office professional, technical, industrial and medical divisions, cautions employers that with the low unemployment rate, they need to keep the employees they have happy.

“It’s been extremely difficult to find qualified candidates for our clients,” said Emy Yamauchi-Wong, manager for ALTRES’ office professional division. “Every new client that comes in, as well as return clients, we tell them … how difficult it will be to find employees.”

Hawaii’s nonagricultural payroll job count, which includes multiple jobs held by one person but does not include self-employed jobs, decreased by 2,500 last month to 655,700 from 658,200 in July. Tian attributed the decline to more people being self-employed. Self-employed people are included in the unemployment rate but not in the nonagricultural payroll number.

Hawaii’s labor force, which includes people who are employed, those who are unemployed but actively seeking work, and those who are self-­employed, fell last month to 690,400 from 693,250 in July. There were 672,350 employed in August, down from 674,600 the previous month. The number of unemployed declined to 18,050 from 18,650.

Across the state the unemployment rate fell in August in three of the four main counties from the year ­earlier. State and national labor-force data are adjusted for seasonal factors, but the county jobs data are not seasonally adjusted and thus do not take into account variations such as the winter holiday and summer vacation seasons.

Honolulu County’s rate held at 2.3 percent while Hawaii County’s rate fell to 2.8 from 3.3 percent, Kauai County’s rate dropped to 2.3 from 2.4 percent and Maui County’s rate declined to 2.5 from 2.7 percent. Within Maui County, Maui’s jobless rate fell to 2.3 from 2.4 percent, Molokai’s rate declined to 7.6 from 9.2 percent and Lanai’s rate fell to 3.1 from 6.0 percent.