It pays to be an internist in Hawaii.
Not so much, though, if you’re a retail salesperson.
Internists in the state average $111.32 an hour and make an average $231,550 a year, according to the Occupational Employment and Wages in Hawai‘i 2013 report issued Wednesday by the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations.
Retail salespersons are the largest occupational group with 24,370 employees, but they average only $12.31 an hour for an annual wage of $25,610. The median wage — half the people are above and half below — is even lower at $10.92 an hour.
The Labor Department collected the data in a semiannual mail survey over a three-year cycle.
In the survey, 3,500 of the 5,220 businesses solicited for data provided usable responses.
Those businesses gave data on 620 occupations, which amounted to a 67 percent response rate representing 78 percent of the workforce.
Besides internists, the other highest-paying occupations are family and general practitioners, $222,510; and physicians and surgeons, $203,090.
For the largest occupations, retail salespersons are followed by office clerks, $30,980; and cashiers, $23,240.