Episode 4: Mobility through lifelong learning
The Good news:
Opportunities exist within Hawaiʻi’s workforce
Hawaiʻi has the talent and the jobs, but connecting workers to opportunities to advance needs to be solved at the local level to unlock statewide benefit.
Across Hawaiʻi, an estimated 53,800 workers without a four-year college degree who are within $10,000 per year of a living wage—representing a significant share of residents who are already participating in the labor market, but remain just short of long-term economic stability.
This opportunity, however, is not evenly distributed. Each island operates within a distinct labor market with different industries, wage structures, and constraints. But taken together, they reveal a consistent pattern: a meaningful number of workers across the state are already within reach of higher-wage outcomes. This creates a critical starting point: if we can identify where workers are already close to a living wage, we can begin to understand how economic mobility occurs in practice—and how to build clearer pathways that enable more residents to achieve it.
STARs workers are workers who are “Skilled Through Alternative Routes.” Click here to learn more.
Economic mobility depends on coordination between:
Employers creating and filling roles
Training providers preparing workers
Funders investing in pathways that connect the two
The Challenge:
Hawaiʻi’s workforce system was not built with a vision for continuous movement into better jobs over time.
Hawaiʻi’s workforce system has grown over time—across programs, sectors, and institutions—each solving for a piece of the puzzle. But the connections between those pieces are often unclear.
The result is a pattern we can see across the state:
There are workers struggling to get ahead
There are jobs that offer significantly better wages
There are training opportunities intended to bridge the gap
And yet—movement between these points is not happening at the scale we would expect. For many workers, progress is possible—but not predictable.
What’s missing is not effort—but design. These parts were not designed to function as a connected system that supports movement into better jobs over time. This is not because these approaches don’t work. It’s because they are not consistently connected.
Recent investments—like the Good Jobs Hawaiʻi initiative—have shown that when training is aligned with real labor market demand, the impact is clear and measurable. Workers see meaningful wage gains. Career trajectories shift. These outcomes show that economic mobility can be achieved when the right conditions are in place.
What we are beginning to understand is more specific: Upskilling is most effective when it enables movement into parts of the labor market where demand, wages, and access are aligned.
This episode builds on that insight.
It focuses on how individuals move between roles, industries, and wage levels—and how we can use data not just to understand those patterns, but to begin identifying where economic mobility can be intentionally supported.
Because the next phase of this work is about applying what we’ve learned:
identifying where real opportunity is emerging
understanding how workers can move into it
and designing systems that make that movement visible and scalable
Today, we still rely heavily on assumptions about which industries are “in demand.” We invest in training without consistent feedback loops. We measure wages—but often cannot see the pathways that lead to them.
This creates a gap in visibility—one that makes it difficult to consistently connect workers to real opportunity.
Hawaiʻi needs a system where lifelong learning and upskilling are guided by clear signals—so investments align with real opportunity, and mobility can be intentionally supported and scaled over time.
Hawaiʻi is not one workforce system—it is a set of distinct local systems, each with a different configuration of opportunity and constraint.
County by county
Initiatives to create more jobs and expand training programs from a statewide perspective doesn’t guarantee upward mobility in specific island communities. Understanding the industry conditions, geography, and education/training options county by county reveals unique opportunities and challenges that require tailored, strategic approaches. Economic mobility is shaped locally, which means it must also be designed locally.
Explore county by county to learn more about the nuances of each county’s situation.
The solution:
sustained, local, coordinated investment makes movement possible
When these investments are aligned and sustained, they begin to turn fragmented opportunity into intentional pathways for economic mobility.
Investments in workforce mobility increase earnings and provide economic benefit, but they also help retain local talent and reduce structural inefficiencies. This isn’t just about growing the economy—it’s about preventing it from becoming more expensive and less accessible to Hawaiʻi’s residents over time.
WOrker Impact
If we invested a total of $108M over 10 years across all four counties, we could support approximately 5,380 workers per year to transition into higher-wage roles. Over ten years, this approach would support more than 53,800 workers statewide in making this transition. Based on observed outcomes from Good Jobs Hawaiʻi, this would generate approximately $2.1 billion in additional earnings over that period.
This represents a return of nearly $20 in additional earnings per worker for every $1 invested.
Economic Impact
When extended beyond individual earnings, the broader economic impact becomes even more significant. Over ten years, the projected wage gains translate into approximately $3.0 billion in total economic activity statewide, reflecting how increased earnings are spent and recirculated across local economies.
At a total investment of approximately $108 million, this represents a return of nearly $28 in economic activity for every $1 invested.
Importantly, this is not a separate statewide model—it is the combined effect of place-based strategies implemented within each county. The variation across counties reflects differences in cost of living, labor market structure, and workforce composition.
What this view makes clear is the scale of what becomes possible when local systems begin to align. Rather than relying on a single statewide solution, this approach builds from the ground up—strengthening workforce pathways within each county while contributing to a broader, more resilient state economy.
Workforce mobility is built locally—and when it works, its impact compounds across the state.