LIHUE — The Hawaii State Department of Labor &Industrial Relations announced that the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate statewide for May was 2.8 percent, the same as in March and April.
Statewide, 648,850 individuals were employed and 18,900 were unemployed in May for a total seasonally adjusted labor force of 667,800. Nationally, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 3.6 percent in May, the same as in April.
On Kauai, the net seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for May was 2.5 percent, down from 2.9 percent in April and up from 2.4 percent in May of 2018. The County of Kauai had the second-lowest seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in the state for May, along with Maui County and Honolulu, whom both had a seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 2.5 percent.
Molokai had the highest rate, registering 5.4 percent for the month of May. Hawaii County came in at 3.4 percent, with Lanai registering the lowest unemployment rate with .9 percent, according to the DLIR.
The County of Kauai is .3 percent below the state seasonally adjusted unemployment rate and 1.1 percent below the national rate of 3.6 percent.
Overall, the state labor force shrank in May of 2019, which according to the DLIR, the state of Hawaii had a total labor force of 667,800 individuals. In May of 2018, the DLIR reported there were a total of 679,450 laborers statewide, a drop of 11,650 workers.
According to the DLIR, the number of individuals who were unemployed statewide in the month of May was 18,900, an increase of 2,950 statewide from the May 2018 number of 15,950 individuals.
The highest number of individuals were employed by the government statewide in May (126,400) with 33,900 being employed by the federal government, 73,500 employed by the state government and 19,000 work for local governments statewide. The second-highest number of individuals (125,100) working in the hospitality sector, with the third-highest number of individuals (120,200) working in the transportation industry.
