Hawaii’s Tourism Industry Is Bouncing Back. But Where Are All The Jobs? … A study shows unemployment insurance payments aren’t keeping people from rejoining the workforce but economists don’t know why hospitality jobs have not fully returned.
As Hawaii’s tourism industry rebounds from a pandemic that shut down the industry in 2020, a question continues to stump economists: Where are all the jobs?
Hawaii’s passenger arrivals averaged more that 30,000 per day in July, and August has been just as strong, with 32,500 arrivals on average for the first four days of the month, according to the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. Although softer than the normal summer crush, that’s still roughly equal to the average arrivals for 2019, before the pandemic, when Hawaii had more than 10 million tourists.
Meanwhile, hotels reported 31,572 jobs in Hawaii midway through 2021, according to the American Hotel and Lodging Association. That’s up from 2020’s low of about 21,000, but still about 12,700 fewer than in 2019, a 29% decline.
