Honolulu wages 3% more than U.S. average | The Honolulu Advertiser

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Honolulu wages 3% more than U.S. average | The Honolulu Advertiser | Hawaii's Newspaper

Posted on: Monday, October 2, 2006

Honolulu wages 3% more than U.S. average

By Rick Daysog
Advertiser Staff Writer

Workers in Honolulu earned slightly more than the national average, especially in the construction, nursing and hotel industries, last year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But the pay for Honolulu teachers, accountants and high-tech workers lagged those earned by their counterparts on the Mainland.

In a report released last week, the bureau said the pay for workers in Honolulu was 3 percent higher than the national average for the year ending June 30, 2005.

The bureau, whose study included more than 820 types of jobs in 152 areas around the country, found the highest wages were in the San Francisco and Silicon Valley region, where pay levels exceeded the national average by 17 percent.

The lowest wages were found in the Brownsville, Texas, area, where the average employee earned 19 percent less than the national average.

On a job-by-job basis, the bureau found that:

Honolulu electricians, benefiting from the statewide building boom of the past several years, enjoyed a 46 percent premium over the national average. Electricians earned an average of $30.06 an hour in Honolulu, whereas the U.S. average is about $20.57.

The pay for hotel and resort desk clerks in Honolulu exceeded the national average by 77 percent. The bureau found that the average pay for local desk workers was $15.16 an hour, compared with the national average of $8.56 an hour.

Nurses here earned $66,460 a year last year, which is 22 percent more than their peers on the Mainland, whose average pay is about $54,670 the bureau said.

Elementary school teachers, meanwhile, earned an average pay of $40,880, which is 7 percent less than the national average of $44,040, the bureau said.

Computer programmers earned about $54,250 in Honolulu last year — about 14 percent less than the national average of $63,420.

Local accountants received about $46,670 a year, which is 11 percent less than the Mainland average of $52,210.

Byron Gangnes, associate professor of economics at the University of Hawai'i, said the so-called pay premium often does not make up for the high living costs in Hawai'i, which exceeds costs on the Mainland by 30 percent to 40 percent.

"Even if we earn a little bit more on an hourly basis, we don't earn enough to offset the cost-of-living premium," he said.

Reach Rick Daysog at rdaysog@honoluluadvertiser.com.

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