For some jobs in Hawaii, it’s an employees’ market

Take a look around, next time you’re popping into the local fast-food spot or in any number of retail businesses. There are a lot more with prominent help-wanted signs, at the very least. There are even some places (a McDonald’s in Kaneohe was one) who have entire employee-application booths set up right there, like the ones at job fairs.

Expect to see more of them. The unemployment rate in Hawaii, long below the national average, dropped another one-tenth of a percentage point to hit its lowest point in a decade this week: 2.6 percent. Let’s enjoy it while we have it.

UH-Manoa looking better and better nationally

The University of Hawaii at Manoa has generated some good headlines lately. The football team is winning, sort of (there was that 56-23 loss to UCLA). The school recently won a $3.1 million federal grant to study cancer’s effect on different ethnicities.

Its national rankings show progress, too. It moved from 69 to 63 in the nation in the 2018 Times Higher Education World University Rankings. And the latest comes from U.S. News and World Report, which moved Manoa up 10 spots on its famous Best Colleges list, to 159 out of 311.

The top public schools? It’s a tie between the University of California at Berkeley and yes, UCLA.