Want to be among the highest-paid workers in Hawaii?
A job in the utility industry should help, along with being white, male and well educated.
The state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism culled that information from the most recent data in the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2012-2016 American Community Survey.
DBEDT released a report Tuesday that breaks down earnings by demographics of Hawaii’s population and also compared earnings by job industry with national averages.
In its broadest comparison, the report showed that Hawaii workers earned less on average compared with the nation, largely because the biggest employment sector here is part of the relatively low-paying tourism industry.
Full-time workers in Hawaii earned an average $51,347 annually in the 2012-2016 period. That compared with a U.S. average of $54,840.
The difference was largely due to which industries employed the most people.
In Hawaii the largest industry by Census category was “accommodation and food services,” where 13.6 percent of Hawaii’s workforce had jobs during the five-year period, compared with 7.5 percent for the U.S.
Full-time Hawaii workers in this category earned $36,452 on average, which was $7,712 higher than the U.S. accommodation and food services average of $28,740.
The next-biggest workforce sector in Hawaii, retail, also is highly related to tourism. This sector employed 11.6 percent of the local workforce and paid $39,211 on average to full-time workers. The category of health care and social assistance was third biggest in Hawaii and employed 11.4 percent of the workforce and paid $61,112 on average for full-time work.
Luis Salaveria, DBEDT director, said in a statement that it is encouraging that Hawaii employees in the accommodation and food services sector were paid better than their counterparts in the nation. He also noted that this category together with retail employ a quarter of the state’s workforce.
The biggest employment sector nationally was health care and social assistance, which employed 13.8 percent of the workforce and paid $53,800 on average. That was followed by retail, which employed 11.5 percent of the U.S. workforce and paid $41,735 on average, and manufacturing, which employed 10.4 percent of the U.S. workforce and paid $58,320 on average.
The highest-paying industry nationally for full-time work was professional, scientific and technical services at $84,967 on average. In Hawaii the highest average full-time pay was in the utilities industry at $70,596.
Eugene Tian, the state’s chief economist, said in a statement that the report may be helpful to people planning to enter the job market. However, he added that most statistics in the report are averages for an industry. That means specific jobs within an industry can have wide disparities in pay.
The report factored earnings from people paid hourly wages or salaries as well as the self-employed.
Other highlights in the report showed that during the five-year period Hawaii’s workforce was:
>> 52 percent male and 48 percent female.
>> 78 percent full time and 22 percent part time.
>> 10.5 percent self-employed.
>> 33 percent millennials (born 1981-1998), 37 percent Generation X (born 1965-1980), 28 percent baby boomers (born 1946-1964) and 1 percent born before 1946.
The report also found that full-time earnings were higher for the better educated, for males and for whites.
Average earnings for workers with high school diplomas or an equivalent was $37,977. The comparable figure was $46,780 for workers with an associate’s degree and some college education, and $67,680 for workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher.
Male workers earned $55,925 on average compared with $45,948 for female workers.
By racial group, people who identified as being only white earned $55,597. That compared with $44,126 for Asian workers, $36,748 for Native Hawaiian workers and $39,706 for a category of mixed or other race.
A link to the report can be found at dbedt.hawaii.gov.
