Honolulu Is Bad at Creating Livable Wage Jobs
The capital is the only metropolitan area not located in a right-to-work state near the bottom of the list for new jobs with decent salaries.
Honolulu has a very low unemployment rate — it is hovering around 4 percent. But when it comes to creating new jobs that pay a livable wage, we’re in some surprising company.
A recently released analysis by the website CareerBuilder examined the nation’s 150 largest urban areas to assess which ones have generated new jobs since 2010 that pay the local living wage.
Just 22 percent of newly created jobs in urban Honolulu pay the local living wage of $23,48. That means we are 142nd on the list — just nine slots from the bottom.
The other non-living wage bottom-feeders are metropolitan areas in right-to-work states where the costs of living is much lower. Six of them are in Florida.
Urban Honolulu’s dismal spot on the list is the result of our high prices and an economy that will almost certainly need to diversify if it is going to create new well-paying jobs.
