Episode 5:
The workforce Understory
Field Guide
The Workforce Understory is built around a simple belief: good workforce decisions require both evidence and curiosity.
Chapter 1
The Workforce Challenge
What problem are we actually trying to solve?
Too often, workforce conversations begin with assumptions or isolated experiences. We believe better decisions begin by asking thoughtful questions, examining the best available evidence, and remaining curious about what we still have to learn.
Over the past year, the Workforce Understory has explored Hawaiʻi’s workforce through a series of data stories. Each episode began with a question, examined the best available evidence, and invited readers to look beyond familiar narratives toward a deeper understanding of the opportunities and challenges shaping Hawaiʻi’s future.
As each question led to the next, a broader understanding began to emerge.
Rather than simply producing a collection of reports, Season One began building a shared way of understanding Hawaiʻi’s workforce. Each episode answered important questions, raised new ones, and added another piece to a much larger picture.
This Field Guide brings those pieces together. It reorganizes the insights from Season One around the major questions we believe Hawaiʻi must answer if we are to achieve the vision of the Hawaiʻi Generational Workforce Commitment: ensuring that by 2045, all people in Hawaiʻi have a path to a career that enables them to learn, work, and thrive in Hawaiʻi while contributing to a vibrant economy grounded in community values.
Whether you work in education, workforce development, government, philanthropy, economic development, business, or simply care about Hawaiʻi’s future, our hope is that this guide provides a common starting point for conversation and collaboration.
Chapter 2
Access to opportunity
How is opportunity experienced across Hawaiʻi’s workforce?
Chapter 3
Recognizing opportunity
Where should communities focus their efforts?
Chapter 4
Building Mobility Pathways
How do we turn opportunity into lasting mobility?
Chapter 5
NEXT Questions
What questions remain unanswered? What do we need to know to learn more?
how this field guide works
We begin with an important workforce question.
Then we summarize what we learned from the evidence collected throughout Season One of the Workforce Understory.
Next, we explain why those findings matter—not as definitive answers, but as our current understanding of what the evidence suggests.
Finally, we identify the new questions that emerge, recognizing that better decisions depend not only on better answers, but on asking better questions.
This reflects a core belief of the Workforce Understory:
Evidence should not end the conversation. It should help us have a better one.
A Living Guide
The Workforce Understory was never intended to produce the final word on Hawaiʻi’s workforce. Its purpose is to help build a shared understanding—one that evolves as new data becomes available, new partnerships emerge, and communities continue learning together. This Field Guide represents what we understand today.
If good workforce decisions require both evidence and curiosity, then our hope is simple: that this Field Guide helps Hawaiʻi ask better questions, make better decisions, and build a better tomorrow.
What problem are we actually trying to solve?
How is opportunity experienced across Hawaiʻi’s workforce?
How do communities recognize where economic mobility is already emerging?
How do communities turn opportunity into lasting economic mobility?
What questions remain unanswered, and what workforce intelligence will Hawaiʻi need to continue learning together?