Economic woes have residents leaving Hawaii, delaying retirement

For 38 years, Julie Gabot has cleaned hotel rooms and worked a slate of extra jobs to keep her family afloat across the islands. Now 68, Gabot is still a housekeeper at the Sheraton Waikiki, commuting daily by bus from her home in Ewa Beach. She is technically retired, but her pension falls desperately short of covering the rising cost of living in Hawaii. To bridge the gap, she maintains a small online business and keeps working grueling shifts. Her daily grind is not just a personal hard-luck story; it serves as a glaring window into the structural economic pressures squeezing Hawaii’s aging workforce and forcing younger generations to pack up and leave.

The numbers behind this exodus reveal a local labor market starkly at odds with its own glowing headlines. According to research from the Hawai‘i Workforce Funders Collaborative reported by the Hawai‘i Tribune-Herald, roughly 371,600 job openings are projected across the state between 2022 and 2032. Yet only about 101,200 of those positions pay at or above the estimated living wage for a single adult. Using the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s benchmark—pegged at roughly $64,500 annually for a single adult without children—the data exposes a harsh mismatch.

“That suggests that the number of jobs being created doesn’t necessarily tell us the full story about the economic opportunities available to residents,” said Matt Stevens, executive director of the Hawai’i Workforce Funders Collaborative.

The Illusion of Low Unemployment

At first glance, Hawaii’s labor market looks remarkably robust. Steven Bond-Smith, a researcher with the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization (UHERO), points out that income growth has not kept pace with the rest of the country.

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Even professionals with advanced skills take a financial haircut compared to mainland peers. A typical accountant in Hawaii earns about $74,500 annually, trailing the national average of $83,680. Software developers pull in roughly $124,040, well short of the $135,980 standard on the mainland. Heavy reliance on tourism and the military leaves narrow pathways for career growth elsewhere.

Tourism Revenue and the Squeezed Paycheck

Tourism, historically the bedrock of isle employment, is generating less relative wealth than it used to. Adjusted for inflation, visitor spending peaked at $22.7 billion back in 1989 and slumped to $21.7 billion in 2025, even as annual visitor arrivals climbed by about 5%. This dynamic means each visitor spends roughly one-third less per trip than they did decades ago. Squeezing more travelers onto the islands without a corresponding bump in revenue leaves virtually no room for organic wage growth.

This earnings lag hits families hardest. A 2024 report by the State Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism (DBEDT) found that a single adult in Honolulu County needed $20.22 an hour just to meet basic needs. For a single parent raising two children, that threshold skyrocketed to $41.50 an hour—nearly triple the state’s $14 minimum wage at the time. Although Hawaii bumped its minimum wage to $16 an hour in January 2026, living costs continue to outpace income gains. Overall price levels run about 10% higher than the national average, making the state the second-most expensive in the nation.

Housing costs compound the pressure. UHERO’s 2025 Housing Factbook showed that fewer than 1 in 4 Hawaii households can afford a mortgage on a single-family home, with the statewide median price hitting an eye-watering $950,000 in 2025. Per capita income tells the same sobering story: Hawaii residents earned 30% above the national average in 1970, but by 2025, that advantage vanished, with per capita income settling roughly equal to the national mark at about $77,000.

Younger Generations Head for the Mainland

Faced with stagnant wages and exorbitant housing, younger residents are voting with their feet. U.S. Census Bureau population estimates analyzed by UHERO show that about 55,000 more people left Hawaii than moved to the islands between 2017 and 2025. Outmigration is particularly sharp among residents ages 18 to 24, many of whom leave for college or early career opportunities and never return.

Economic woes have residents leaving Hawaii, delaying retirement

Older workers are filling the immediate gaps left by departing youth, keeping labor shortages at bay for now. Yet Hawaii’s total labor force remains about 9,000 workers smaller than its 2017 peak. With births barely outpacing deaths—recording only about 2,000 more births than deaths in 2025 compared to 7,100 a decade prior—the local talent pool is shrinking fast.

For Julie Gabot, the daily reality of working through her retirement years underscores the personal cost of these macroeconomic trends. When she started housekeeping in 1988, she cleaned up to 16 rooms per shift before union pushback lowered the requirement to 14. Now, decades later, she works alongside peers in their late 60s who simply cannot afford to stop.

“Even though you have a high salary, if (prices) keep going up, it’s really not enough,” Gabot said.