For 38 years, Julie Gabot has cleaned hotel rooms and worked additional jobs to help support her family.
Now 68, Gabot is still a housekeeper at the Sheraton Waikiki, commuting daily by bus from her home in Ewa Beach. Although technically retired, her pension is not enough to cover the cost of living, leaving her with little choice but to continue working.
She also runs a small online business to supplement her income. Before the pandemic, Gabot held three jobs at once, working long hours to help pay the mortgage and raise her two children.
“I had to look for another job because it’s really not enough,” she said. “I missed a lot of precious moments with my family, especially with my kids — moments that I can never get back.”
Her experience reflects the broader economic realities of Hawaii’s aging workforce and the dimming prospects for younger generations of local residents, many of whom are leaving the state in search of better-paying jobs and more affordable places to establish their lives.
Research by the Hawai‘i Workforce Funders Collaborative found that of approximately 371,600 projected job openings in Hawaii between 2022 and 2032, only about 101,200 were in occupations with average wages at or above the estimated living wage for a single adult.
The organization used the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s 2025 statewide living-wage estimate of roughly $62,000 annually for a single adult without children. MIT’s updated estimate for 2026 is approximately $64,500.
“That suggests that the number of jobs being created doesn’t necessarily tell us the full story about the economic opportunities available to residents,” said Matt Stevens, executive director of the Hawai’i Workforce Funders Collaborative, a nonprofit organization launched in 2021 by HMSA, the Harold K.L. Castle Foundation, The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation and the Hawai‘i Community Foundation “to strengthen partnerships and systems to provide equitable access to quality, living wage jobs for Hawaii residents.”
The findings highlight the difference between having available jobs and having jobs that allow people to make a living.
Education and workforce training are important, Stevens said, but those investments must also lead to meaningful opportunities for financial stability and career advancement. That includes strengthening career pathways, improving job quality and supporting economic development that creates good jobs across the islands.
Low unemployment
Hawaii’s relatively low unemployment rate might suggest a healthy labor market. But the number of people working does not necessarily reflect whether those jobs pay enough to support a household.
Steven Bond-Smith, a researcher with the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization, said Hawaii’s unemployment rate was 2.9% in September compared with 4.2% nationally. The state’s underemployment rate, which includes people working part time who want more hours and people who have stopped looking for work, was also below the national average.
But Hawaii has a smaller share of workers in several traditionally higher-paying occupations.
Management accounts for 6.9% of Hawaii’s jobs, compared with 7.2% nationally. Business and finance occupations make up 4.8% of isle jobs, compared with 6.8% nationally, while computing jobs account for 1.9%, compared with 3.4% nationally.
Meanwhile, the food service industry accounts for 13.2% of Hawaii’s jobs, compared with 8.8% nationally, and cleaning occupations account for 5.2%, compared with 2.9% nationally.
Bond-Smith said those differences have persisted for at least two decades, suggesting they are not simply a temporary labor shortage but a structural feature of Hawaii’s economy.
“It’s really that Hawaii just has fewer good jobs, but it can’t really be called a shortage,” he said. “It’s more an unfortunate feature of our economy.”
Even workers in higher-paying occupations often earn less than their counterparts on the mainland.
The typical accountant in Hawaii earns about $74,500 annually, compared with $83,680 nationally. Software developers earn about $124,040, compared with $135,980 nationally.
Bond-Smith said the state’s economy is heavily concentrated in industries such as tourism and the military, leaving fewer opportunities for growth in other sectors.
Tourism, once a source of relatively higher-paying jobs, also has experienced declining visitor spending.
Adjusted for inflation, visitor spending peaked at $22.7 billion in 1989 and was $21.7 billion in 2025, even as visitor arrivals increased by about 5%. That means each visitor now spends roughly one-third less per trip than in 1989, Bond-Smith said.
Serving more visitors without a comparable increase in revenue leaves less room for wage growth.
By the numbers
The challenges also are reflected in Hawaii’s migration patterns.
About 55,000 more people left Hawaii than moved here between 2017 and 2025, according to U.S. Census Bureau population estimates analyzed through UHERO’s data portal.
The departures are particularly pronounced among younger residents. UHERO found that more Hawaii-born residents ages 18 to 24 leave than return, often for college or first jobs. The trend is reversed among those ages 25 to 44, with more returning than leaving.
Housing affordability remains a challenge: fewer than 1 in 4 Hawaii households can afford a mortgage on a single-family home, according to UHERO’s 2025 Housing Factbook.
Bond-Smith said Hawaii has always been expensive, but the underlying problem is that income growth has not kept pace with the rest of the country.
Hawaii’s income per person was 30% above the national average in 1970 and 17% above it in 1980. By 2025, it was roughly equal to the national average, at about $77,000.
State Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism data shows that Hawaii workers have seen modest gains in purchasing power over the past decade. Adjusted for inflation, real wages increased 1.2% between 2015 and 2025, slightly outpacing the national increase of 0.9%.
Even with those gains, wages do not necessarily stretch far enough to cover basic expenses, particularly for households with children.
A 2024 DBEDT report found that a single adult in Honolulu County needed to earn $20.22 an hour to meet basic needs. For a single parent with two children, that figure rose to $41.50 an hour — nearly three times the state’s $14 hourly minimum wage in 2024. Hawaii’s minimum wage increased to $16 an hour in January 2026.
The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis estimated that Hawaii’s overall price level was about 10% higher than the national average in 2024, making it the second-most expensive state in the country. Additionally, UHERO reported that Hawaii had the nation’s highest median single-family home prices in 2025, with a statewide median of about $950,000.
For residents earning incomes comparable to the national average, those higher expenses leave less money for savings, retirement and other necessities.
Working in retirement
For workers such as Gabot, the cost of living does not disappear when retirement age arrives.
Gabot said the amount she receives in Social Security benefits is insufficient to cover her expenses, including her mortgage and other household bills. She worries about whether she will have enough savings when she eventually stops working.
She hopes to retire within two years but rising prices make that goal uncertain.
When she first started housekeeping in 1988, Gabot was cleaning as many as 16 rooms during an eight-hour shift. After workers pushed for workload reductions, the daily requirement dropped to 14 rooms.
Over the years, she also took on other responsibilities within the housekeeping department, including serving as a clerk reliever. Recently, she signed up to work as a linen attendant because she wanted a regular shift.
Gabot said she and several coworkers in their late 60s are still working because they need the income.
“Even though you have a high salary, if (prices) keep going up, it’s really not enough,” she said.
Gabot also worries about her children, who still live with her. Her son is looking for work, while her daughter is pursuing a master’s degree in hopes of finding a better-paying job. Gabot wants her children to have opportunities to establish themselves in Hawaii but understands how difficult that can be.
Bond-Smith said older employees who remain in the workforce can help ease labor shortages in the short term. But Hawaii’s labor force is already about 9,000 people smaller than its 2017 peak, and with births barely outpacing deaths, the labor pool will remain constrained.
The state recorded about 2,000 more births than deaths in 2025, compared with 7,100 in 2015.
Shrinking workforce
As the population ages and the workforce shrinks, employers could face increasing difficulty filling positions, particularly in healthcare, where demand is expected to grow alongside the elderly population.
A shrinking workforce also has implications for state finances. Fewer workers can mean less income tax revenue, while an older population requires more public services, placing additional pressure on the workers who remain.
Bond-Smith said the long-term solution is to increase productivity and income per person, allowing Hawaii’s economy to generate more economic growth with fewer workers. He pointed to the need for more housing reforms and policies that make it easier for businesses to start, expand and invest in the state as potential strategies.
Stevens said workforce challenges cannot be addressed by focusing solely on employers’ ability to recruit workers. The state must also consider whether the opportunities available allow residents to build stable lives and advance in their careers.
The Hawaii Workforce Funders Collaborative’s Generational Workforce Commitment sets a statewide goal that by 2045, all people in Hawaii will have pathways to careers that allow them to learn, work and thrive in the islands.
Achieving that goal will require collaboration among businesses, schools, government, philanthropy and communities, Stevens said.
His organization’s research has not specifically examined whether younger workers are making different financial decisions or whether older workers are delaying retirement because they cannot afford to stop working. But he said those questions point to a larger concern about economic stability throughout people’s working lives.
For Gabot, that stability means being able to stop working without worrying about whether her pension will cover her bills.
After decades of working multiple jobs to support her family, she hopes to finally have enough saved to retire.
“I hope I can save some money for my retirement,” Gabot said. “But you know, almost every day everything gets more expensive.”
