The level of unemployment in Hawaii has gotten terribly ugly over the past four weeks as businesses shuttered or scaled back amid the COVID-19 scourge.
It may even be the ugliest nationwide.
A ballpark calculation by USA Today concludes that Hawaii has had the highest rate of unemployment of all states during a four-week period ending April 11.
Hawaii’s rate of 21.7% topped Michigan at 21% and Rhode Island at 20.6%.
The lowest rates were 4.9% for South Dakota followed by 5.8% for West Virginia and 6.2% for Florida.
Hawaii’s rate during the period is up from 2.7% in the first two months of this year.
USA Today compiled state unemployment claim totals published by the U.S. Department of Labor for the week ended April 11 and three preceding weeks. The newspaper then divided the four-week total by the most recent workforce tallies available by state, which was in February, to get a rough unemployment rate.
That Hawaii’s rate topped every other state wasn’t surprising to Hawaii Department of Labor and Industrial Relations officials, given the local economy’s high dependence on one industry — tourism — that has almost completely seized up.
“We knew early on that Hawaii was going to get hit very hard, so we’re not surprised that some analysts have concluded that we have the highest percentage of the workforce filing for benefits,” said Bill Kunstman, DLIR spokesman. “When we passed 200,000 filings in early April, we were flabbergasted at the magnitude of the situation.”
Kunstman added that it is highly likely USA Today totals are incomplete because the federal data is missing some claims.
Also, unemployment filings have continued pouring in this week, which means Hawaii’s unemployment rate has risen above the four-week USA Today snapshot that was based on 145,205 claims.
From the beginning of March through Wednesday, DLIR reported receiving 244,330 initial unemployment claims. Based on a preliminary March estimate of 651,650 people in the state’s labor force, Hawaii’s unemployment rate would be 37% — or more than one out of every three people in the labor force.
One major mitigating factor is expected to reduce the unemployment rate soon. This is the Paycheck Protection Program whereby Hawaii businesses were granted $2 billion from the federal government in the form of forgivable loans to primarily restore worker wages that were lost in relation to the new coronavirus.
Much of this money is expected to flow to recently unemployed workers who will no longer be considered unemployed or be eligible for unemployment benefits.
“It is important to note that some aspects of the recent federal legislation will likely attenuate the job losses,” said a University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization report released March 30.
That report projected that the state’s unemployment rate would settle at 13.7% for the whole year after peaking at about 25% sometime between April and June.
UHERO Director Carl Bonham noted at the time that the forecast contains uncertainty.
“There’s really not any comparison that you can make to an economy where you’ve basically shut down hospitality and tourism, and will remain shut down for several months,” he said. “We know Hawaii is already in a deep recession, and that recession will surpass anything that we’ve seen in our lifetimes.”
