Civil Beat’s database of Hawaiʻi public employee salaries has been updated with the latest numbers for the fiscal year running from July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026.

Since 2011, Civil Beat has tracked the salaries or salary ranges of state and local government employees. Included are salaries and hourly pay during nine of those years for what are now 74,600 state and 19,300 local government employees – 14% of the 668,500 civilian jobs in the state. Federal workers’ salaries are not included.

More: Recent Government Salary Hikes At The Top Leave Many Public Workers Behind

Civil Beat gathers the salary information through public information requests to 19 state and county agencies under Hawaiʻi’s Uniform Information Practices Act. 

Although a powerful search function allows users to generate several pages of results from one search, adding more details helps filter results and make them more relevant. 

Here’s a breakdown of the available search terms for database users. 

Department

The state and local government agencies are selected using a drop-down menu. Searching this category alone will produce results for the entire agency. If no department is selected, the database defaults to results for all public sector jobs in Hawaiʻi.

Sub-Department

Not every agency lists employees under a separate sub-department but, if they do, the sub-departments will show up in the drop-down menu. The City and County of Honolulu is an example of an agency with numerous sub-departments.

First and Last Name 

Names are not required to produce results, with names, for an agency. But searches can be done for individuals using first and last name. 

Title

A drop-down list of job titles will appear for the agency selected under “Department.” Search by job title will produce results across departments.

Salary Range Start and End

Entering a salary range will return results for all state and local government employees within that range, regardless of agency. Salary ranges can be surprisingly wide and this search will generate a lot of results. 

Fiscal Year

The database contains information for fiscal years 2011, 2012, 2013, 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022, 2024 and 2026. Searches can be narrowed to any of those years.

Hourly Employees

Civil Beat requests information on hourly employees, such as seasonal lifeguards hired by the Honolulu Department of Parks and Recreation. A checkbox filters results to show employees who are paid by the hour.

Per Diem Salaries

Some categories of state employees are paid on a per-diem basis, including justices with the state judiciary. That shows up in their job titles. 

Various Quirks

Even if the agency supplied a precise salary, wages are shown as a range. The University of Hawaiʻi is an example where some employee salaries were provided by range and others by salary point depending on their collective bargaining unit or representation. 

Absent from the UH data are salaries for graduate assistants, whose personal information is protected under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act or FERPA. UH is working to provide a list of the those positions and salaries with names redacted, which will be added to the database when it is made available.

Maui County has often struggled to supply salary data in time to be included in the database updates. Currently available are the increases for 42 elected officials, directors and deputies that went into effect July 1. A full update remains pending.

In the past, some eagle-eyed readers have spotted employees turning up twice in the results. That can occur if an employee moved between two different positions with different salaries.

Some other salary increases that are yet to take effect but will be retroactive to July 1 are not yet shown. That includes an average 5% annual increase for county police personnel.

Corrections, questions or comments?

A database of nearly 100,000 entries will contain errors, especially when it’s compiled from 19 agencies that provided the information in different formats. We continue to spot-check and maintain the database after launch, but also try to quickly respond to errors spotted by readers. Email us at public-salaries@civilbeat.org with your correction requests, questions and comments.