Episode 4:
Mobility
through lifelong learning
Learning is widely understood as a pathway to higher earnings. —but in Hawaiʻi, whether that pathway leads to real economic mobility depends on how well it connects to actual opportunity.
Across Hawaiʻi’s workforce system, lifelong learning and upskilling have become the primary strategy for improving economic outcomes. Public investments, education programs, and workforce initiatives are increasingly focused on helping individuals gain new skills, earn credentials, and transition into higher-wage roles.
At its core, the model is straightforward:
Gain skills → Access better jobs → Increase earnings
In theory, this pathway seems straightforward. In practice, however, the results are uneven. Many households in Hawaiʻi are already working—and still struggling to meet basic needs. The connection between learning and upward mobility exists, but it is not consistently realized. Recent investments, like Good Jobs Hawaiʻi, begin to clarify why. Training can lead to meaningful wage gains—but only when it is connected to specific labor market conditions.
This raises a more precise question:
What needs to be in place for learning to consistently translate into economic mobility?
Good Jobs Hawaiʻi:
UHERO’s ANALYSIS of what works
Good Jobs Hawaiʻiprovides one of the first detailed looks at what happens after large-scale investment in short-term workforce training. With more than $35 million invested in free training across healthcare, technology, clean energy and skilled trades, and creative industries, the initiative reached thousands of residents across the state.
UHEROtracked early outcomes for participants who completed training in healthcare, skilled trades, and technology programs and found that, on average, participants experienced measurable wage gains after completing training—approximately $7,200 per year, or about a 12% increase. These gains appeared relatively quickly, suggesting that short-term credential programs can translate into improved earnings within a short timeframe.
At the same time, these outcomes were not uniform across sectors—pointing to an important reality: training alone does not guarantee results.
To better understand what drives these differences, The Workforce Understory spoke with Rachel Inafuku of the University of Hawaiʻi Economic Research Organization (UHERO). Her analysis highlights three key insights about how upskilling pathways function in practice.
UHERO’s GOod Jobs hawaiʻi insights
1. Upskilling works when there's a skill match and demand for the skills.
UHERO’s data shows that job training can positively affect wage trajectories when workers gain skills that align with higher-paying occupations and meet existing employer demand. Inafuku explained, “In the Good Jobs Hawaiʻi program, the largest wage gains were concentrated among students who transitioned into industries aligned with their training, particularly healthcare and skilled trades. In contrast, gains for technology students were much smaller. A key distinction between healthcare and skilled trades versus the technology sector is labor demand in Hawaiʻi. While construction activity remains strong and demand for healthcare workers continues to grow, labor market opportunities in the technology sector are comparatively limited.” Taken together, these findings suggest that training alone is not sufficient; wage gains are greatest when newly acquired skills are connected to industries with sustained demand for workers.
2. The biggest wage gains come from moving from a low paying industry to a high paying industry.
While those who switched industries experienced the largest wage gains, workers who were already employed in an industry aligned with their training and remained in that field also saw some wage growth. These reflect two distinct mobility pathways. Many of those who switched industries were previously employed in lower-wage, lower-skill sectors such as accommodation and food services and moved into jobs more closely aligned with their training after completing the program. Inafuku explained how this works, “In these cases, wage gains were largely driven by occupational mobility into higher-paying industries. In contrast, workers who entered training while already employed in a related field were more likely using the program to build additional skills rather than make a full career transition. These workers—particularly in healthcare—also experienced wage gains, suggesting that both industry switching and skill-building can improve earnings, though the largest gains tend to come from transitioning into higher-paying sectors.”
3. Lack of labor market and outcome data is a critical limitation to developing effective systems—we don't know what occupations folks are moving between.
When we asked what challenges we face in building successful mobility pathways, Inafuku responded, “The greatest limitation we face in measuring the effectiveness of training is the lack of occupation-specific data. Much of the available administrative data tracks employment and earnings at the industry level rather than the occupation level, which makes it difficult to determine whether participants are actually moving into jobs that directly reflect the skills they acquired through training.” To illustrate, we can observe that someone moved into the healthcare industry, but cannot distinguish whether they became a registered nurse, or remained in a similar role within the healthcare sector. This limits our ability to distinguish between wage gains driven by true skill-based advancement and those resulting from broader industry shifts. More detailed occupational data would allow for a clearer assessment of whether training programs are successfully placing workers into the specific high-demand roles they are designed to fill.
These insights point to a more focused question:
If training works under specific conditions, where do those conditions already exist—and how can we identify them?
Defining workforce opportunity:
Access, economic sustainability, Momentum
Economic mobility depends on how mobility is structured.
Inspired by Rachel Inafuku’s insights on UHERO’s Good Jobs Hawaiʻi data, the Workforce Understory researched what indicators might point to sectors ripe for scaling opportunity, and where these opportunities might be present. What we learned is that across Hawaiʻi’s labor market, there are already clear examples emerging of jobs that offer real potential for upward mobility.
Nationally, organizations like Opportunity@Work have helped bring visibility to workers who are Skilled Through Alternative Routes, or STARs framework—individuals who have developed skills through work, training, or life experience rather than a four-year degree. Through a partnership with Lightcast, this work incorporates real-time labor market data to highlight where skills-based hiring is already taking place.
This approach focuses on roles where workers without bachelor’s degrees are already participating in the labor market—providing a clearer view of where skills-based hiring is actively functioning today.
This same potential exists in Hawaiʻi. Across the state, the majority of job postings align with the STARs framework—suggesting that many jobs are accessible to workers without a four-year degree. But real opportunity for advancement only exists when three key factors align:
Access
Access reflects whether workers can realistically enter a job without a four-year degree. We measure this using the share of job postings classified as STARs-relevant—roles identified through a collaboration between Opportunity@Work and Lightcast.
These are not simply jobs that do not require a degree. They are roles where workers who are Skilled Through Alternative Routes (STARs) are already participating—and where skills-based hiring is actively functioning in the labor market.
In this analysis, sectors where more than half of postings are STARs-relevant are considered broadly accessible.
Economic Sustainability
Access alone is not enough. Jobs must also provide wages that allow workers to remain in Hawaiʻi over time.
We measure this by comparing median wages for STARs roles to the MIT Living Wage threshold for a single adult, adjusted by county.
Sectors that meet or exceed this threshold are considered capable of supporting long-term economic stability.
Momentum
Finally, opportunity must be expanding—not shrinking. We measure momentum by comparing growth in STARs job postings to overall job growth within each sector.
Positive momentum indicates that accessible roles are growing faster than the broader market—suggesting expanding opportunity for workers without degrees.
Just as important as overall growth is where that growth occurs. When expansion is concentrated in roles that are not broadly accessible, opportunity may increase without becoming more inclusive.
When all three conditions are present, we see the strongest signals of a functioning mobility pathway—where workers can enter, earn, and advance over time.
But the sectors where only one or two conditions are present are just as important. These reveal how opportunity is structured—and where mobility breaks down.
To move from analysis to action, we grouped industries into mobility pathway profiles—anchor, building, partial, or limited—based on how access, economic sustainability, and momentum come together in practice.
These profiles help clarify where economic mobility is already functioning, where it is breaking down, and what it would take to strengthen pathways through more coordinated, sustained investment.
Anchor
Already functioning mobility pathways where access, living wages, and momentum are aligned.
Recommendation: Scale what’s working.
Expand training capacity tied directly to these sectors
Remove bottlenecks (instructors, clinical slots, certifications)
Align funding to grow participation
Strengthen progression (entry → mid → advanced roles)
Building
These are almost mobility pathways with 2 of the 3 factors present, but something is blocking the third factor.
Recommendation: Target the missing factor.
If access is missing → expand entry points through training, hiring practices, and/or credential redesign
If wages are missing → improve job quality through employer practices, subsidies, and/or role design
If momentum is missing → stabilize demand through public investment, project pipelines, and/or coordination
Partial
With only one or two factors inconsistently present, these are not full mobility pathways. But they are still important.
Recommendation: Clarify their role in the system.
Treat as entry points (not endpoints)
Build explicit bridges to other sectors
Improve navigation (career guidance, signaling)
Identify where people go next
Limited
These sectors do not currently support mobility at scale because factors are not aligned.
Recommendation: Do not treat as primary mobility strategies.
Avoid over-investing as “mobility pathways”
If large sector → focus on worker protections, wage floors, transition support to other industries
* If small sector → deprioritize for system-level strategy
A statewide pattern:
Opportunity is distributed, But we need to work on designing mobility pathways that lead to real gains
Hawaiʻi’s labor market does not function as a single, connected mobility pathway. Instead, it operates as a set of partially connected segments—each offering only part of what workers need to build sustainable careers.
When we focus specifically on sectors where STARs roles meet living wage thresholds, we see:
Administrative and Support Services stands out as the strongest example.
Nearly 60% of job postings in this sector are accessible through skills-based hiring, and those roles are growing faster than the overall industry—suggesting both broad access and expanding opportunity. However, this sector is largely made up of staffing agencies that are used as stopgaps for other industries. Rather than representing a strong industry, this represents holes in other industries.
A second pattern appears in sectors like Information.
Here, only 43% of roles are currently accessible to workers without degrees, but those roles are growing significantly faster than the rest of the industry. This indicates that while access is still limited, it is expanding—potentially signaling a shift toward more skills-based hiring in higher-wage fields.
A similar dynamic is visible in Accommodation and Food Services.
While just 27% of roles are currently accessible STARs opportunities, those positions are growing even as overall job postings in the sector decline. In other words, within a traditionally lower-wage industry, a subset of roles is beginning to diverge—offering more stable and potentially sustainable career paths.
Taken together, these patterns reinforce an important insight: Opportunity is not evenly distributed within industries and it is not static.
Some sectors offer broad access but limited wage growth. Others offer strong wages but are only beginning to open to workers without degrees. And in some cases, opportunity is emerging within industries in ways that are not immediately visible without looking at how different segments of the labor market are changing over time.
But this view only tells part of the story. It shows how opportunity is distributed across industries—but not how it is evolving within them. To understand where movement might actually be happening, we need to look more closely at how access and growth interact inside individual sectors.
County by county:
Hawaiʻi is not a single workforce system.
Economic mobility is shaped locally.
Industry mix, geography, and scale vary significantly across counties. These differences shape how opportunity is experienced—and how economic mobility pathways function in practice. The statewide analysis shows the structure of opportunity, but not how that structure is experienced locally—how each person actually moves through mobility pathways within the system.
Each county operates as a distinct labor market, shaped not only by industry mix and population, but by geography. Because our counties are separated by ocean, workers cannot easily move between them—making local alignment between jobs, training, and opportunity especially important.
This means economic mobility must be built through place-based strategies aligned to local industries.
A sector that appears stable statewide may be volatile at the county level. A mobility pathway that requires moving across industries in one county may occur within a single industry in another. To fully understand workforce opportunity in Hawaiʻi, we must look at how these patterns play out locally.
Taken together, this analysis shows that economic mobility in Hawaiʻi is not absent—it is uneven, incomplete, and often difficult to navigate. But it also shows something more important: the conditions for mobility already exist. The challenge now is to make those conditions visible, connected, and scalable.
Click on the counties below to see how this framework applies to each county, and to see which and where mobility pathways are strongest, weakest, and most fragmented along with recommendations for how to strengthen them.
Interested in jumping to our learnings and recommendations for developing mobility pathways in Hawaiʻi?