Episode 3:
Paid pathways
as infrastructure
The system story
designing internships for scale
If paid pathways into a first job are a leading indicator of generational progress, then scale matters.
Over the next decade, approximately 170,000 young people will enter Hawaiʻi’s workforce — an average of 17,000 per year. If the goal is universal access to at least one high-quality, paid work-based learning experience, the system must be capable of delivering at that level annually.
Before asking how to grow, we first need to understand: Where are we starting?
Start exploring the systems view below, or jump to case studies.
1. The scale of the commitment
What portion of annual workforce entrants currently have known access to paid internships or high-quality work-based learning?
Based on publicly shared data and partner interviews used to generate this episode, we can conservatively identify approximately 2,067 placements per year. That represents roughly 12% of the 17,000 young people entering the workforce annually.
This is not a comprehensive statewide inventory. Hawaiʻi does not currently have a unified tracking system for paid work-based learning. The figure reflects known programs and reported placements — meaning the true number may be higher. But even allowing for undercounting, the gap between current visibility and universal access is substantial.
How many internships already exist in Hawaiʻi?
The baseline estimate above reflects a small set of known programs and reported internship activity. These include:
Healthcare Association of Hawaiʻi’s certifications and internship pathways
Maui Economic Develop Board’s STEMworks internships
Hawaiʻi Department of Education Hosted Internships
DLIR’s Hele Imua Internship Program
A variety of paid internship opportunities for public four-year college attendees
Several of these programs are explored in greater depth later in this episode. The purpose of this chart is not to provide a full accounting. It is to illustrate that:
Strong programs already exist.
They are producing real placements.
They are not yet coordinated at statewide scale.
If Hawaiʻi committed to universal access over the next decade, what would steady growth require?
Starting from a baseline of 2,067 known placements, reaching 17,000 annually by 2035 would require approximately 1,493 additional placements each year. This model assumes linear growth — not acceleration, not exponential expansion — just steady, cumulative addition. The chart illustrates two dynamics:
Recurring placements from previous years continue.
New placements are added annually.
By 2035, the system would need to sustain 17,000 high-quality experiences per year. This projection is not a policy proposal. It is a scale illustration — showing that universal access is ambitious, but measurable.
The question now shifts from aspiration to feasibility:
Does Hawaiʻi’s employer ecosystem have the capacity to generate opportunity at this scale?
2. Employer capacity: is this realistic?
Reaching 17,000 high-quality paid pathways per year is not just a programmatic question. It is a structural one. Does Hawaiʻi’s employer ecosystem have the capacity to generate opportunity at this scale? To answer that, we begin with the composition of Hawaiʻi’s business community.
Hawaiʻi’s economy is not anchored by a large concentration of major corporate headquarters. It is driven primarily by small and mid-sized firms.
Businesses with 1–19 employees: 21,821
Businesses with 20–499 employees: 2,907
Businesses with 500+ employees: 1,018
An additional 119,000 businesses report zero employees and are not included in internship hosting assumptions.
More than 99% of Hawaiʻi businesses with employees have fewer than 500 workers. If paid pathways are to reach universal scale, participation must be distributed across this ecosystem. The model cannot rely on a handful of large employers. It must engage small and mid-sized firms statewide.
If Hawaiʻi pursued a steady 10-year growth path toward universal access, how many employers would need to participate?
Under a conservative participation model:
Participating small firms (1–19 employees) host 2 interns per year
Participating mid-sized firms (20–499 employees) host 8 interns per year
By 2035, this would require approximately:
4,690 small employers
650 mid-sized employers
Participating cumulatively over the decade. That represents roughly 22% of Hawaiʻi businesses with employees. This modeling suggests that universal access is structurally possible — but only if participation grows steadily and intentionally.
The challenge is not the absence of employers, it is recruitment, readiness, and coordination. Even small increases in employer participation can produce large gains in placements. If a few hundred additional small firms host just two interns per year — and several dozen mid-sized firms host eight — the system moves significantly closer to universal access.
In Hawaiʻi’s economy, growth does not depend on a handful of large employers expanding dramatically. It depends on broad participation across many small and mid-sized businesses.
If the employer ecosystem can support this level of participation, the next question becomes:
What does it actually cost to operate at this scale — and how should that cost be shared?
3. The true cost of scale
In the previous section, we examined whether universal access is structurally possible. The math suggests it is — if employer participation grows steadily and intentionally.
But participation alone does not create access. Internships require real investment. To understand what scale demands, we begin by estimating the costs of a single placement.
There is no such thing as a “free” internship.
At first glance, an internship appears to cost $2,400 — the wage paid to a young person over six weeks.
But wages are only part of the equation. Delivering a high-quality experience requires supervision, onboarding, internal coordination, and basic materials. Under conservative assumptions:
Wages: $2,400
Supervision: $1,350
Administration: $360
Supplies: $300
Total direct cost: $4,410
The supervision estimate assumes approximately six hours per week at $37.50 per hour. This is not meant to imply that one highly paid employee carries the full responsibility. In practice, strong internship design often involves shared supervision across team members and cross-departmental exposure. The estimate simply reflects the economic value of senior-level time dedicated to coaching, oversight, and feedback — whether that time is delivered as three hours at a higher wage or several hours across multiple staff at other wage levels.
Even when wages are subsidized, supervision time and internal capacity do not disappear. These are necessary investments in order to ensure that the experience is high value for both the intern and the employer host.
If one internship carries real cost, scaling to thousands carries system-level cost.
The next question is about what sustained access requires financially.
As internships move from isolated programs to statewide infrastructure, cost becomes structural — not episodic.
Using the $4,410 per-internship estimate and the growth path outlined earlier:
Direct cost in 2026: approximately $15 million
Direct cost in 2035: approximately $75 million annually
These figures reflect wages, supervision, administration, and supplies only. They represent what it would cost to deliver 17,000 high-quality placements per year under steady expansion.
Delivering thousands of placements annually requires more than paying wages and supervision.
It requires coordination capacity.
The operational muscle required to make distributed participation possible.
Scaling employer participation requires:
Recruiting and preparing employers
Matching interns to placements
Providing coaching and troubleshooting
Tracking participation and outcomes
These coordination functions are typically carried by intermediary organizations. We will share more about these in our case studies section below. Adding a 20% intermediary infrastructure assumption increases projected annual system cost to:
Approximately $18.8 million in 2026
Nearly $90 million annually by 2035
This additional layer is not overhead inefficiency. It represents the operational muscle required to make distributed participation sustainable. Without coordination infrastructure, growth stalls.
Once full system cost is visible, the conversation shifts.
The question becomes: how should responsibility be shared?
The total estimated cost per internship — including coordination — is $5,292.
The question is not simply who pays that amount, it is how Hawaiʻi chooses to structure risk and responsibility over time. Different allocation approaches represent different strategies:
Full employer funding assumes immediate, visible return on investment.
Public wage support lowers employer barriers while participation matures.
Match models distribute ownership and signal shared commitment.
This modeling does not determine funding. It clarifies the economic architecture required to move from pilots to infrastructure. Universal access is not only about participation. It is about sequencing investment, building proof, and designing for durability. Scaling employer participation requires:
Recruiting and preparing employers
Matching interns to placements
Providing coaching and troubleshooting
Tracking participation and outcomes
In early phases, public and philanthropic investment may function as catalytic capital — absorbing uncertainty while employers build supervision capacity, refine internship design, and begin measuring return on investment. Over time, as participation stabilizes and outcomes become measurable, cost allocation can evolve.
what the simulations reveal
Universal access is a scale question, not a pilot question.
Intermediary and data infrastructure are as important as wage subsidies.
Employer participation must grow incrementally but steadily.
Without shared measurement, we cannot determine whether impact is compounding.
The simulation provides scale context. The following case studies provide operational insight. Together, they help clarify both what is working today — and what would be required to coordinate and measure this work at statewide scale.
roots to canopy
Explore Episode 3
Healthcare Association of Hawaiʻi Case Study
HAH High School Healthcare Certification Program demonstrates the importance of funding and capacity for placement onboarding and coordination, employer coaching, internship supervision, and tracking outcomes.
MEDB STEMworks Case Study
Maui Economic Development Board STEMworks Program demonstrates scaling requires ecosystem design: early exposure, sector alignment, education partnerships, employer, trust, and place-based coordination.
Employer Perspectives: Costs and Benefits
Hawaiʻi Employers Council shares the misconceptions employers have around what internships, as well as the key building blocks for a quality internship and what employers stand to gain by investing in young people.
What we learned and where the data points.
Signals, answers, and questions that can inform policy, research, and strategy moving forward.