What share of Honolulu County’s projected job openings between 2022 and 2032 will pay a living wage?
Workforce Understory Episode: Season 1, Episode 1 — The Geography of Opportunity
Geography: Honoulu County
Topic: Living-wage opportunity, projected job growth, and job quality
The takeaway
Honolulu County is projected to generate 249,500 job openings between 2022 and 2032—by far the largest number of any county in Hawaiʻi.
Approximately 71,500 of those openings are expected to meet or exceed the living-wage threshold, while roughly 178,000 will fall below it.
Although Honolulu has the highest share of living-wage openings among Hawaiʻi’s counties, 71% of its projected openings will still pay below a living wage.
Even in the county with Hawaiʻi’s strongest ratio of living-wage opportunity, fewer than three in ten projected openings will provide a living wage.
What this visualization shows
This visualization compares the total number of projected job openings in Honolulu County with the number expected to meet or exceed the county’s living-wage threshold.
Honolulu stands apart from the other counties because of the sheer scale of its labor market. It accounts for most of Hawaiʻi’s projected job openings and offers substantially more living-wage opportunities in absolute terms than any other county.
Yet scale does not eliminate the underlying job-quality challenge.
Nearly three-quarters of Honolulu’s projected openings will fall below the living-wage threshold. This means the county can simultaneously offer the greatest number of quality jobs in the state and still produce far more jobs that do not provide enough income to meet the local cost of living.
The visualization therefore reveals an important distinction between having the strongest labor market in Hawaiʻi and having a labor market that creates enough economic security.
Honolulu performs better relative to the other counties, but it still faces the same structural imbalance between the quantity of jobs and the quality of those opportunities.
Why this matters
Because Honolulu contains the state’s largest concentration of employers, educational institutions, public agencies, and economic activity, it plays an outsized role in shaping Hawaiʻi’s workforce future.
Its 71,500 projected living-wage openings represent significant opportunity. They offer the potential to connect tens of thousands of people with careers that support greater stability and economic mobility.
But the approximately 178,000 openings below the living-wage threshold are equally important.
At that scale, below-living-wage work cannot be treated as a marginal part of the economy or addressed only by helping individual workers move into different careers. Honolulu must also consider how to improve job quality within the industries and occupations that will continue employing large numbers of people.
That may require a combination of strategies: expanding living-wage sectors, strengthening advancement pathways, improving wages and benefits, increasing access to education and training, and helping employers redesign jobs so that more workers can build stable careers.
Honolulu’s scale also means that even modest improvements could have substantial statewide effects. Increasing the share of living-wage openings by only a few percentage points could improve the quality of thousands of future employment opportunities.
This evidence invites Honolulu to ask:
What would it take to improve job quality at the scale of Hawaiʻi’s largest labor market?
Evidence:
Questions this visualization helps answer
How many total job openings are projected in Honolulu County?
How many of those openings are expected to meet the living-wage threshold?
How does Honolulu’s balance of living-wage and below-living-wage openings compare with the other counties?
Does the county’s large number of job openings translate into enough opportunities for economic security?
How large is Honolulu’s job-quality challenge in absolute terms?
Curiosity:
Questions this visualization raises
What would a realistic good-jobs growth strategy look like across a labor market as large and diverse as Honolulu’s?
Which industries and occupations account for most of the approximately 178,000 below-living-wage openings?
Which occupation groups create the greatest number of living-wage opportunities?
How much of Honolulu’s below-living-wage employment is concentrated in tourism, food service, retail, caregiving, administration, and other service occupations?
Which existing below-living-wage occupations offer credible pathways toward advancement?
What policies or employer practices could improve wages, benefits, scheduling, and job stability at scale?
How can Honolulu expand access to its living-wage opportunities for workers without four-year degrees?
Do residents across Oʻahu have equal access to the county’s strongest employment opportunities?
How do housing and transportation costs affect whether a nominally living-wage job provides genuine economic security?
Which investments could produce the greatest increase in living-wage openings over the next decade?
Is Honolulu’s share of living-wage opportunity improving or declining over time?
How would statewide economic mobility change if Honolulu modestly increased the percentage of jobs that pay a living wage?
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