WARN Act Layoffs in Hawaii

In-Depth Analysis: Layoffs in Hawaii

# Hawaii's Layoff Landscape: A Comprehensive Economic Analysis

Executive Summary

Hawaii's labor market has experienced profound disruption over the past six years, with 1,283 WARN notices affecting 82,880 workers across the state. The data reveals a landscape shaped overwhelmingly by a single catastrophic year: 2020 accounted for 736 notices displacing 66,366 workers—approximately 80 percent of all layoffs in the dataset. This concentration reflects the devastating impact of COVID-19 lockdowns on Hawaii's tourism-dependent economy, particularly its accommodation and food services sector. While the state has recovered substantially from that nadir, layoff activity remains elevated relative to pre-pandemic baselines, suggesting structural fragility in key employment sectors and vulnerability to demand shocks. The trajectory from 2021 onward—hovering between 76 and 95 notices annually—indicates that while the acute crisis has passed, the underlying employment dynamics remain precarious.

The geographic and sectoral patterns are equally illuminating. Honolulu dominates the layoff landscape with 215 notices affecting 42,597 workers, representing roughly half of all displaced workers statewide. This concentration reflects both Honolulu's role as the economic hub of Hawaii and the particular vulnerability of its tourism and hospitality infrastructure. The dominance of Accommodation & Food Services as a layoff driver—accounting for 311 notices and 31,421 workers—underscores Hawaii's structural economic dependence on a single vulnerable industry. For state policymakers and economic development officials, this pattern presents both an immediate challenge for workforce redeployment and a longer-term strategic question about economic diversification.

Industry Analysis: The Tourism Economy in Crisis

The layoff data presents an economy in thrall to a single industry. The Accommodation & Food Services sector generated 311 notices affecting 31,421 workers, representing 24 percent of all notices but 38 percent of all displaced workers. This disproportionate concentration—where one industry accounts for a far larger share of workers than notices—indicates that when layoffs occur in hospitality, they tend to be massive, affecting entire properties or large divisions simultaneously. The second-largest sector by worker count, Transportation, contributed 54 notices but only 4,506 displaced workers, yielding a much lower average displacement per notice. This sectoral dominance reflects Hawaii's fundamental economic structure: tourism generates approximately one-quarter of state employment and a similar proportion of tax revenue, making the islands perpetually vulnerable to demand shocks and operational disruptions.

Within the hospitality sector, the pattern is one of recurring, episodic reductions rather than a single downsizing event. Montage Kapalua Bay filed 13 separate WARN notices displacing 565 workers, while Fairmont Orchid filed 12 notices affecting 341 workers. These repeated filings suggest that luxury resort operators have adopted a strategy of incremental workforce adjustment rather than permanent headcount reduction. This approach may reflect labor market dynamics in Hawaii's tight local labor market, where losing trained hospitality workers during downturns risks losing them permanently to migration or job transitions. The strategy also suggests business volatility: if a single major hospitality property were operating at stable capacity, it would file one comprehensive WARN notice during a restructuring, not multiple notices over an extended period.

The Transportation sector tells a distinct story, driven primarily by airline operations. Hawaiian Airlines filed 17 notices affecting 2,882 workers, making it the single largest employer generating WARN notices in Hawaii. United Airlines added 7 notices affecting 487 workers. These notices largely cluster in 2020-2021, reflecting the aviation industry's near-total collapse during pandemic lockdowns and its subsequent, uneven recovery. Unlike the hospitality sector, which has shown signs of secular demand recovery, airline layoffs reflect both cyclical downturn and structural changes in network capacity and scheduling practices following the pandemic.

The Healthcare sector, with 103 notices affecting 4,009 workers, presents a more complex picture. Adventist Health Castle filed 10 notices affecting 84 workers, while parent company Adventist Health filed 9 notices affecting 15 workers—a pattern suggesting consolidation and administrative restructuring rather than demand-driven reductions. Healthcare layoffs in Hawaii likely reflect bed rationalization, administrative consolidation, and the reallocation of clinical staff following the shift toward outpatient and telehealth delivery models that accelerated during the pandemic.

Retail contributed 16 notices affecting 2,049 workers, reflecting the ongoing secular decline of brick-and-mortar retail. The relative scarcity of retail WARN notices (only 1.2 percent of all notices) despite significant worker displacement suggests that retail companies have increasingly relied on gradual store closures and attrition rather than mass layoff events that trigger WARN notification requirements. This pattern indicates a sector in managed decline rather than acute crisis.

Geographic Concentration and Regional Vulnerability

Hawaii's layoff geography is heavily concentrated on Oahu, with Honolulu accounting for 215 notices and 42,597 affected workers—51 percent of the statewide total. This concentration reflects several factors: Honolulu hosts the state's largest tourism market, the headquarters of major employers like Hawaiian Airlines, and the densest concentration of hospitality properties. The remaining outer islands show marked vulnerability to tourism volatility. Lahaina registered 28 notices affecting 5,285 workers, representing a disproportionately high worker-to-notice ratio of 189 workers per notice. This concentration reflects the collapse of Lahaina's tourism economy during pandemic lockdowns.

The resort-dominated communities on Maui and Kauai—Wailea with 10 notices affecting 5,142 workers and Koloa with 11 notices affecting 1,889 workers—show similar patterns of episodic mass displacement. These are wealthy resort destinations with limited economic diversification, making their labor markets acutely sensitive to tourism demand. The Kailua-Kona area on Hawaii Island registered 11 notices affecting 2,575 workers, again reflecting concentration in luxury resort employment.

The geographic data reveals a critical economic vulnerability: Hawaii lacks the industrial diversification found in mainland metropolitan areas. The state's secondary cities—Hilo, Lihue, and Kahului—show relatively modest layoff activity, suggesting either smaller total employment bases or less reliance on cyclically-sensitive industries. The fact that three percent of Hawaii's total laid-off workers are from Honolulu means that disruptions to the capital city's hospitality and transportation sectors have statewide economic consequences through reduced tax revenue, reduced spending, and migration of displaced workers to the mainland.

Major Employers and Strategic Workforce Management

The top employers filing WARN notices reveal the structural composition of Hawaii's economy and the strategies these firms employ during downturns. Hawaiian Airlines stands alone as the state's largest source of layoff notices, with 17 filings displacing 2,882 workers. For context, this represents the airline's recurring adjustments to capacity and staffing following demand shocks. Montage Kapalua Bay, Fairmont Orchid, and Fairmont Kea Lani collectively filed 31 notices affecting 1,886 workers—evidence that the state's highest-end resort operators are experiencing recurring operational adjustments.

A critical observation emerges from examining the threshold data: Marriott International filed 9 notices affecting only 48 workers, an average of 5.3 workers per notice—far below the 50-worker threshold required to trigger WARN notification in Hawaii. This anomaly suggests either data entry errors or that Marriott filed WARN notices out of abundance of caution despite falling below statutory thresholds. Similarly, Adventist Health filed 9 notices affecting 15 workers, again well below thresholds.

The prominence of resort operators in the WARN data reflects their role as major employers in Hawaii's economy, but it also reflects their operational characteristics: resort properties employ hundreds of workers in housekeeping, food service, maintenance, and hospitality, making any operational adjustment a significant layoff event. Contrast this with TMobile, which filed 6 notices affecting only 31 workers—a telecom company shedding administrative or support staff through multiple small reductions.

The appearance of companies like DFS Group LP (6 notices, 576 workers) and BAE Systems (6 notices, 344 workers) indicates that Hawaii hosts significant duty-free retail operations and defense contracting facilities. BAE Systems layoffs likely reflect defense budget cycles and program completion schedules, while DFS reductions reflect tourism demand sensitivity—the duty-free business exists to serve tourists, making it as cyclically sensitive as hotels themselves.

Historical Evolution: From Acute Crisis to Persistent Vulnerability

The year-over-year trajectory of WARN notices reveals the arc of Hawaii's post-pandemic adjustment. The 2020 figure of 736 notices affecting 66,366 workers represents an economic catastrophe: this single year accounted for 57 percent of all WARN notices and 80 percent of all displaced workers in the six-year period. The magnitude of this shock—displacing more than eight percent of Hawaii's total employment base in a single year—explains the lasting psychological and economic impact of the pandemic on the islands.

The recovery from this nadir has been incomplete and uneven. The 2021 figure dropped sharply to 95 notices affecting 3,991 workers, suggesting that many of the 2020 layoffs were either temporary furloughs or involved permanent closures that required only a single WARN notice. However, the subsequent years show a plateau rather than a return to pre-pandemic baselines. The 2019 baseline of 53 notices affecting 2,377 workers suggests that "normal" layoff activity in Hawaii involves roughly 50 notices annually. The figures for 2021-2025 averaging roughly 87 notices annually indicate that layoff activity remains 64 percent above pre-pandemic levels.

This elevated baseline is troubling because it suggests structural employment fragility rather than cyclical recovery. If Hawaii's employment market had fully recovered, layoff activity should have declined to 2019 levels by 2022 or 2023. The persistence of elevated notices through 2025, with 92 notices affecting 2,023 workers, indicates that employers remain in adjustment mode years after the pandemic shock. This could reflect either: gradual downsizing as businesses calibrate to lower steady-state demand, permanent automation and labor shedding as companies adopt more efficient operating models post-pandemic, or ongoing uncertainty driving repeated marginal adjustments rather than single comprehensive reductions.

The early 2026 data showing 13 notices affecting 522 workers should be treated cautiously, as this partial-year figure may not be representative. However, if extrapolated to a full year (averaging 13 notices per quarter), it would suggest a return toward 52 notices annually—approaching 2019 levels. This would represent genuine recovery. Conversely, if the first quarter pace slows in subsequent quarters, it could indicate further deterioration.

Economic Context: Hawaii's Structural Vulnerability

Hawaii's layoff patterns must be understood within the context of the state's unique economic structure. The islands host an economy narrowly dependent on tourism, military spending, and government employment. Tourism generates roughly 25 percent of state employment and comprises the lion's share of private-sector jobs. The military presence—primarily U.S. Navy installations—generates substantial direct employment and indirect spending. This dual dependence on tourism and defense creates a labor market highly sensitive to federal policy changes, international travel patterns, and demand shocks.

Hawaii's isolation creates both challenges and opportunities that shape layoff dynamics. The islands cannot easily absorb displaced workers into alternative economic sectors because the economy lacks the manufacturing, logistics, technology, and corporate headquarters employment that provide redeployment opportunities in mainland states. When a hospitality worker is displaced in Hawaii, alternative employment typically requires either changing industries into healthcare, government, or small-business employment, or relocating to the mainland. The geographic isolation also means that companies cannot easily relocate operations elsewhere within the state—a hotel must remain where tourists want to visit, and an airline hub must remain in Honolulu.

The state's high cost of living—driven by geographic isolation, regulatory constraints on development, and limited economic competition—amplifies the impact of layoffs. A displaced worker facing $3,000 monthly rent has less savings cushion than a similarly-displaced mainland worker and faces higher barriers to retraining if education costs exceed available resources. This economic pressure likely drives greater out-migration of displaced workers, further reducing the state's employment base.

The data also hints at automation and operational efficiency changes. Wyndham Vacation Ownership filed 8 notices affecting 131 workers, suggesting that vacation ownership operations are shedding administrative staff even as capacity remains stable. Transform SR LLC filed 6 notices affecting 74 workers, a company whose business operations are unclear from available data but whose multiple notices suggest ongoing restructuring. These patterns suggest that Hawaii's employers are adopting labor-saving technologies and business process changes that permanently reduce staffing requirements.

Layoff Type Analysis and Data Quality Considerations

The data classifies 914 notices as "Unknown" type, 304 as "Layoff," and 65 as "Closure." The overwhelming dominance of unknown types (71 percent of notices) is noteworthy and somewhat problematic for analysis. This categorization could reflect incomplete WARN notice filings, data collection inconsistencies, or structural changes that don't fit neatly into layoff/closure categories.

The 65 closures affected an unspecified number of workers, but if distributed proportionally would account for approximately 5,000-6,000 workers. True business closures have distinct economic consequences from layoffs: closure workers face the permanent loss of company benefits, pension plans, and workplace-specific skills, while layoff workers retain the possibility of recall. The low closure count relative to total notices suggests that most employment disruption in Hawaii involves operational adjustments at ongoing enterprises rather than business failure.

Outlook: Structural Challenges and Policy Imperatives

The trajectory of Hawaii's layoff data suggests three distinct scenarios for the coming years. The optimistic scenario assumes the declining trend from 2025-2026 continues, with notices returning to 2019 baselines by 2027, indicating full economic recovery and stabilization. Under this scenario, the pandemic represents a recoverable shock from which the economy rebounds to its previous employment level.

The baseline scenario assumes layoff activity stabilizes at current elevated levels of 80-95 notices annually, indicating a "new normal" with permanently higher workforce churn. This would suggest that employers have adopted post-pandemic operating models with lower staffing requirements or that consumer preferences for Hawaii tourism have shifted to lower-employment service models. Even under this scenario, the state's economy remains viable, but it will generate fewer jobs for new entrants and workers returning from the mainland.

The pessimistic scenario involves renewed disruption—whether from economic recession, renewed tourism collapse, military base realignment, or automation-driven elimination of jobs—that drives layoff activity above 2020 levels. Early warning signs of this scenario would include layoff acceleration in 2027-2028, increasing average worker displacement per notice, or the emergence of closures in major employers.

For policymakers, the current data suggest immediate priorities. First, the state should accelerate economic diversification, supporting growth in technology, healthcare services, and other sectors that offer resilience to tourism shocks. The near-total absence of technology companies in the WARN data (only 5 notices affecting 78 workers) indicates that Hawaii has failed to develop a tech sector capable of providing alternative employment. This is a policy failure that should be addressed through targeted tax incentives, venture capital attraction, and remote work facilitation.

Second, workforce redeployment infrastructure requires strengthening. Hawaii's displaced workers need rapid access to retraining, relocation assistance, and job matching services. The current system appears inadequate given the scale and concentration of recent layoffs in specific geographic areas and industries.

Third, the state should monitor employment metrics closely for signs of deterioration. If average unemployment duration increases, wage premiums shrink, or out-migration accelerates, these would signal that recovery is incomplete and structural problems remain.

For workers and job seekers, the data clearly indicates that Hawaii's labor market rewards specialization in non-tourism sectors—healthcare, technology, government, and professional services show far lower layoff rates than accommodation and food services. Workers considering career development should account for the relative fragility of tourism-dependent employment and the limited geographic mobility options in an island economy.

The WARN data ultimately narrates a story of an island economy confronting its structural limitations. Hawaii's dependence on tourism, geographic isolation, and limited economic diversification create vulnerability to demand shocks and technological change. The pandemic exposed these vulnerabilities with stunning force. The years since have shown gradual recovery but not complete normalization, suggesting that the structural challenges remain and may require fundamental economic policy reorientation to resolve.