KAILUA-KONA — Hawaii Island’s unemployment rate crept up slightly in March while the statewide jobless rate held steady at 2.1 percent for the sixth consecutive month.
Despite the increase to 2.3 percent in March from 2.2 percent in February, Hawaii Island’s rate remains historically low, according to statistics from the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations.
Since 1990, the island has seen a 2.3 percent unemployment rate just two other times, in December 2006 and this January. And lower rates have only been notched twice, 2.2 percent in February and 2 percent in December.
Last March, 2.9 percent of the island’s 91,800-person workforce was without work. The island’s highest unemployment rate was marked in June 1997 at 12.6 percent. In the past decade, unemployment reached a high of 11.2 percent in 2009 and has declined since.
Around the state, Maui County’s unemployment rate was 1.9 percent in March, down from 2 percent in February. Both Kauai County and the City and County of Honolulu saw rates go unchanged at 1.8 percent and 1.9 percent, respectively.
Nationally, the unemployment rate remained unchanged from February at 4.1, down from 4.5 percent in March 2017.
Across the state, job gains were recorded in the leisure and hospitality industry (600), trade, transportation and utilities (400), financial activities (400) and education and health services (100).
Job contraction was reported in manufacturing (100), other services (100), and construction (700). Government employment declined by 500 jobs, the DLIR said.
Employment in the professional and business services and information sectors remained unchanged in March.