Visitor spending is on an early pace for a fifth straight record year, state unemployment is at an eight-year low and the number of people working in Hawaii is at an all-time high.

It’s no wonder that consumers are pulling out their credit and debit cards in increasing numbers.

Sales at businesses open at least a year increased 5.4 percent in the first quarter from the year-earlier period, according to the First Hawaiian Bank Business Activity Report released Friday.

The state’s largest bank processed $826.5 million in transactions from its Hawaii merchants — the second-highest total since the bank began producing its reports in 2010. The percentage increase marked the 25th consecutive quarter of growth. The only other time First Hawaiian merchants generated a greater amount of transactions was in the third quarter of 2014 when they took in $833.1 million in sales.

“It’s pretty much consistent with what we’re seeing in the overall economy in state GDP (gross domestic product), state personal income and state tax base,” said Jack Suyderhoud, a professor of business economics at the University of Hawaii Shidler College of Business. “All of those indicators show an economy that’s been on a growth path — not a boom growth path, but on a reasonably steady sustainable growth path.”

First Hawaiian, which is the largest bank in Hawaii with $19.3 billion in assets, is able to monitor broad economic activity in the state through its card proc­essing services because it is the islands’ largest local processor of debit and credit card transactions. The bank has more than 6,000 merchants in its network, with most of those in the state.

Signs of an improving economy include a 3.8 percent increase in visitor spending through the first two months of the year, a 3.1 percent unemployment rate in March and 668,800 people employed in the state during that period.

Once again, consumers worked up a big appetite as card sales at supermarkets rose 21.5 percent and generated the greatest year-over-year percentage change in that sector for the third consecutive quarter. Supermarkets previously were up 24.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2015 and 28.6 percent in the July-September period.

Suyderhoud said the continued strength in that sector could be due to a shift in how people are paying for items.

“One of the things I would think about is how much of that increase is people who decided to use their credit or debit cards more rather than cash for whatever reason,” he said. “People might be switching from cash to credit cards or debit cards for these types of transactions to pick up airline miles or who knows what reason. I suspect some of the growth in that category is due to a shift in how people pay for their daily needs.”

Other double-digit percentage gainers last quarter were shipping (12.9 percent), home improvement (12.3 percent) and utilities/communications (up 11.2 percent).

Hotels led the way in dollar volume among the 16 sectors tracked with sales totaling $178.5 million. Restaurants were close behind at $155.1 million. The two sectors posted percentage gains of 8.8 percent and 6 percent, respectively.

“It’s probably more important for the economy what the hotels and restaurants did than what the supermarkets did,” Suyderhoud said. “In terms of the volume of dollars, those sectors are going to have a bigger economic impact than the supermarkets themselves.”

Four sectors had lower sales than in the year-earlier quarter: travel agencies (off 1.7 percent), home furnishing (off 3.4 percent), insurance (off 3.9 percent) and retail (off 5.1 percent).