Hawaii’s True Jobless Rate Is A Mystery
Neither the official figure nor the number of unemployment insurance claims offer a clear picture of how many here are out of work.
As COVID-19 takes its economic toll, the latest figures show nearly one in four Hawaii workers are out of a job. Previous data indicated the rate could be higher, at unemployed.
What the actual rate is remains elusive.
On Thursday, state labor officials announced a 22.3% unemployment rate for April.
That figure, however, is based on a monthly federal phone survey of about 1,000 local households that鈥檚 conducted over a one-week period, according to the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations.
The so-called is done via the and the Census Bureau — not DLIR, an agency spokesman said Friday. Its monthly sample generally fails to reach the full 1,000 households, he added.
Thus, it probably doesn鈥檛 reflect Hawaii鈥檚 actual unemployment rate, DLIR spokesman Bill Kunstman said.
鈥淭here鈥檚 no perfect data out there, and there鈥檚 no perfect survey. There鈥檚 limitations to everything, and the unemployment rate is one of those things,鈥 Kuntsman said Friday. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not a particularly large survey.鈥
Meanwhile, Hawaii has seen nearly 242,000 unemployment claims filed since the pandemic hit, according to state data.
That number would seem to give a clearer picture of the state鈥檚 jobless rate when compared to the overall workforce. So far, that offers an incomplete picture as well, however. More than 43,000 of those claims have already been denied and thousands more are expected to be denied going forward.
The final tally of approved claims has yet to be determined. The state has struggled to process them as it deals with unprecedented demand and an antiquated government IT system.
Nearly, 67,000 claims — most of which are the most complicated cases — remain to be processed, according to DLIR.
