Hawaii has one of the highest costs of living in the nation, but workers in the state are lagging behind with an $896 weekly wage that ranks only in the middle of the U.S. average.
There is some evidence, though, that the state may be playing catch-up.
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The average weekly wage and the percent change in the U.S. and Washington, D.C., from the end of the quarter in March 2015 to March 31, 2016:
STATE/DISTRICT WAGE
Average weekly wage
1. Washington, D.C. $1,766
2. New York $1,456
3. Connecticut $1,362
26. Hawaii $896
Percent change
1. Washington state 3.0%
2. Georgia 1.9%
3. Hawaii 1.7%
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
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Hawaii had the third-fastest wage growth during the one-year period that ended March 31, according to recent data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The state’s 1.7 percent wage improvement from $881 in the year-earlier period trailed just Washington state (3 percent) and Georgia (1.9 percent).
Hawaii workers’ average wage of $896 in the latest report was $147 less a week than the national average of $1,043 during the 12-month period. That ranked Hawaii 26th overall out of 50 states and Washington, D.C., whose workers topped the list at $1,766 a week. The U.S. average slipped 0.5 percent from $1,048 in the previous 12-month period.
On an annual basis, that works out to an average wage per year for Hawaii workers of $46,592 compared with $54,236 nationally and $91,832 for workers in Washington, D.C.
In another category of the report, Hawaii employment rose 1.4 percent to 645,129 during the same 12-month period.
That trailed the U.S. job growth of 2 percent during the period but was slightly better than the 1.3 percent growth achieved by Honolulu County, the state’s largest county by population with about 1 million people.
Hawaii’s dominant tourism industry is likely one factor why Hawaii trails the nation in average wage, according to David Kong, statistician for the BLS in San Francisco.
“One thing we can look at in Hawaii is there’s a different mixture than the rest of the U.S. in terms of the types of jobs, and that can have an impact overall on the employment concentrations in the different job areas,” Kong said. “There are a lot of service employees in Hawaii. That is one factor that can make a difference in the average.”
Honolulu County had the highest average weekly wage of any of the counties at $935, according to the report. Kauai County was second at $798, followed by Maui/Kalawao counties at $795 and Hawaii County at $772.
