Hawaii’s 2010 jobless rate ranked nation’s 7th lowest

Hawaii’s unemployment rate averaged 6.6 percent in 2010, the seventh lowest rate in the country, according to a report released Feb. 25. The rate for Hawaii was down from 6.8 percent in 2009 but up from 4.1 percent in 2008, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.

Meanwhile, the U.S. unemployment rate was 9 percent in January, down 0.4 percentage points from December, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. That marked the nation’s lowest unemployment rate since April 2009, when it was 8.9 percent.

The BLS report included revisions to the monthly unemployment data for 2010. Hawaii’s jobless rate was higher in five months and lower in three months than originally reported. It was unrevised in four months. One of the downward changes was for December, in which the BLS revised the unemployment rate to 6.3 percent from the 6.4 percent reported last month.

Although Honolulu's economy contracted by 1.3 percent in 2009, according to a report released Feb. 23, it fared better than most U.S. cities. Honolulu's inflation-adjusted gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity for the city, totaled $44.7 billion in 2009, down from $45.3 billion the year before, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported. The average decline for the nation's 366 metro areas was 2.4 percent.

The Honolulu decline compared with a statewide GDP drop of 1.5 percent in 2009. Honolulu accounts for 75 percent of the state's economic activity. The biggest factor in Honolulu's decline was the transportation and utilities sector, which accounted for 0.72 percentage point of the change. Construction activity accounted for 0.70 percentage point. The declines were partly offset by increases in government, nondurable goods manufacturing and trade, according to the BEA.

> Hawaii residents’ credit card debt is second in U.S. – Hawaii residents had the second-highest average credit card debt in the nation in January, according to consumer credit advocate CreditKarma.com. Hawaii residents’ average credit card debt was $8,439 last month, barely below the $8,456 average debt in December 2010 but significantly below January 2010’s debt of $9,845. New Hampshire had the highest average credit card debt in the nation last month at $8,607.

> Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches 12,000 – The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 12,000 for the first time in 2 1/2 years on Feb. 1, putting the Great Recession even farther in the rearview mirror and erasing most of the damage it inflicted on tens of millions of retirement accounts. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index closed above 1,300 for the first time since Aug. 28, 2008. The remarkable run for stocks began on March 9, 2009, when the Dow stood at 6,547, its lowest point in 12 years.