Introducing The Workforce Understory
A new data storytelling and sensemaking series from the Hawaiʻi Workforce Funders Collaborative
Why “Understory”?
“What if we made space […] for reflection — not just on findings, but on moments […] where we see the human cost of systems that don’t quite work?”
—Maria Torres-Kitamura [from a recent LinkedIn post]
Lately, we’ve been thinking a lot about systems change. Instead of rushing to fix the symptoms of over-worked systems, what if we gave ourselves permission to slow down and learn from the regenerative systems nature has already perfected?
Our workforce, like any ecosystem, depends on the conditions we create to support what’s growing next.
That’s the idea behind The Workforce Understory — a new storytelling and sensemaking series designed to surface what’s emerging beneath the surface of Hawaiʻi’s labor market: early signals, geographic disparities, and the community insights that rarely show up in traditional metrics.
In a forest, the understory is where the future begins — the layer of young growth taking root beneath the canopy. These shoots are often overlooked, but they’re essential. Without the right conditions, a forest cannot regenerate.
If we want Hawaiʻi’s economy to be healthy in the long term, we need to understand it like an ecosystem — one where regeneration depends on how we support what’s trying to grow next.
We tend to focus on what’s already grown (the canopy) — total jobs, GDP, unemployment rates. But those numbers don’t tell us whether the next generation is finding a path forward. They don’t show us what’s trying to grow, or what might be struggling just out of view.
That’s where The Workforce Understory comes in.
This initiative surfaces emerging signals — new perspectives, local insights, early data trends — and asks a simple but urgent question:
Are we creating the conditions for opportunity to grow — for everyone, in every place?
Just as forests thrive differently depending on their climate and surrounding ecosystem, every county and community in Hawaiʻi will need its own approach to a regenerative future. Through this series, we’ll explore what’s already growing — and what needs more light, care, and investment to take root.
What Is the Workforce Understory?
The Workforce Understory is a new data sensemaking series from HWFC, designed to bring visibility to the early signals that shape Hawaiʻi’s workforce future. These include trends in job growth and wages, community insights, funding patterns, and the lived experiences of students, workers, and employers.
Each release in the series will combine:
Visualized labor market data
Narrative analysis of a key workforce challenge
County-level opportunity scorecards
Over time, this series will contribute to a broader dashboarding effort — helping define the shared indicators that matter and bringing visibility to where Hawaiʻi is making progress, and where we need to dig deeper.
Our goal is to connect numbers to context—and to create the kind of shared understanding that can guide better decisions across sectors.
First Release: Living-Wage Jobs by County
The first installment, just launched, explores a critical question:
Are there enough living-wage jobs for the next generation in each of Hawaiʻi’s counties?
In our From Crisis to Opportunity Report, we revealved that nearly 170,000 young people will enter the workforce over the next decade. But current projections show only about 120,000 job openings that meet even a basic single-adult living wage threshold.
In this release, we explore what that gap means — and how it looks different across the islands — while introducing new county-level interactive data visualization tools that begin the conversation around how we measure opportunity at the local level. These early tools will help shape the County-Level Opportunity Scorecards that will emerge and evolve over subsequent releases.
In our first release of The Workforce Understory series, we explore what that gap means — and how it looks different across the islands. It’s a chance to move beyond state-level averages and begin understanding what opportunity truly looks like at the local level.
How the Series Will Work
Each installment will follow a consistent rhythm:
A “sensemaking” blog post that introduces a key challenge or insight
An evolving county-level scorecard with interactive data tools and guided analysis
A webinar to walk through the findings and invite feedback
We’ve designed the series so that different types of users can engage in different ways — whether you’re skimming the blog for big-picture takeaways, digging into visualized data by county or sector, exploring scorecards over time, or using downloadable datasets and guided activities to deepen your own analysis. No matter your entry point, we want this to be a tool that sparks insight, conversation, and action.
Later releases will also include interview spotlights, downloadable datasets, and guided analyst activities for youth and early-career professionals. These tools are designed not just to inform, but to inspire new kinds of engagement and learning.
Together, these pieces are meant to spark curiosity, invite community reflection, and support aligned, informed action across sectors.
🗓️ Season One of The Workforce Understory will unfold between September 2025 and June 2026, with six data releases that track urgent workforce questions across sectors and islands.
Why It Matters
Hawaiʻi is facing a generational opportunity — and a generational challenge. If we want to create a future where all residents can thrive, we need to think differently about how we measure progress, and where we focus attention.
We’ve spent too long measuring what’s already visible, what’s already powerful — and mistaking that for health.
But if we care about regeneration — the future of our communities — we need to look at what’s taking root now, and invest early in the people, sectors, and ideas that can shape what comes next.
The future is already growing. Let’s make sure it has what it needs.
How to Get Involved
This series is designed to be participatory.
We hope you’ll:
Follow along with each release
Explore the data tools and visualizations
Join our release webinars to share feedback and surface insights
Help shape the questions we ask and the indicators we refine
Whether you’re a student, policymaker, funder, educator, employer, or just someone who cares about Hawaiʻi’s future — your perspective matters.
Let’s build the tools we need to grow an economy that works for everyone.
Want to go deeper?
We know you may have questions about the data, methodology, or how to get involved in shaping future releases. We’ll be offering webinars, feedback channels, and deeper dives alongside each installment — so stay tuned, and stay curious.
