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.

Our workforce, like any ecosystem, depends on the conditions we create to support what’s growing 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 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.

This series is made possible through program support from The Kirk-Landry Charitable Fund, Kosasa Foundation, and the entire network of HWFC Pooled Funders.