Hawai‘i’s Unemployment at 2.1% in July

The Hawai‘i State Department of Labor & Industrial Relations announced that the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for July, 2018 was 2.1%, the same as in June, 2018. Statewide, 673,350 were employed and 14,350 unemployed in July for a total seasonally adjusted labor force of 687,700. Nationally, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 3.9% in July, compared to 4.0% in June.

Both initial claims and weeks claims decreased by 51 or 4.2% and by 745 or 9.3% respectively for unemployment benefits compared to one year ago.  Over-the-month initial claims dropped by 9.6 percent and weeks claims increased by 0.9% in July 2018.

The unemployment rate figures for the State of Hawai‘i and the U.S. in this release are seasonally adjusted, in accordance with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics methodology. The not seasonally adjusted rate for the State was 2.2% in July, compared to the revised rate of 2.8% in June.

In another measure of employment, there was an increase of 1,700 total nonagricultural jobs over-the-month. Among the major industries, there were job gains in trade, transportation and utilities (+600), financial activities (+600), construction (+300), and leisure and hospitality (+300).

Within trade, transportation and utilities, most of the job expansion was spread among several categories of retail trade. Gains in financial activities were equally split between finance and insurance and real estate and rental and leasing.

Employment remained unchanged in information and other services. Job losses occurred in manufacturing (-100), professional and business services (-100), and in education and health services (-300). Government went up by 400 jobs. In comparison with one year ago, total nonfarm jobs have increased by 12,700, or 1.9%.

More information on this report can be found online.