by Edwin Quinabo
Almost everyone in Hawaii has a sentimental story to tell of at least one member of the family moving away to somewhere on the mainland. Oddly, having a loved one leave the Hawaiian Islands is so common that it’s become part of Hawaii culture.
Hawaii residents are leaving at every stage of life: as recent high school graduates, middle-aged working adults relocating their entire family or retirees wanting to settle on the mainland hoping to stretch their fixed income.
For a seventh consecutive year, Hawaii’s population has been in decline. The U.S. Census Bureau reports between 2021 and 2022, more than 67,257 people left Hawaii or about 4% of the population. While the population loss might not be substantial because in the same period, 56,209 people moved to Hawaii (a 11,048 net migration loss), for thousands of Hawaii families their loss is personal and irreplaceable.
To get an idea of how large 67,267 is when it comes to outmigration, comparatively the U.S. Census Bureau reports 75,423 Californians left the Golden State in 2023. Only Washington, D.C., New York and Illinois lost more people than Hawaii as a percentage. Hawaii ranked fifth in the nation for the biggest decline by total population, behind West Virginia at -0.6%, Louisiana and Illinois at -0.8%, and New York at -0.9%.
In the previous years since 2018, the out-migration were also roughly 4% of the total Hawaii population of about 1.4 million and being partially replaced by slightly less new residents. While Hawaii’s total population hasn’t changed much, the pattern has been out with Hawaii locals to be replaced by mainlanders and a smaller kamaaina returning home.
Where are Hawaii residents moving to? The top five mainland destinations are California, Washington, Texas, North Carolina, and Nevada.
Economic impact
The annual net migration losses are having an economic impact, economists and researchers say.
Carl Bonham, executive director of the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization (HERO), points out losing the state population means a loss of the state’s tax base, workforce and economic activity. To fill the gap, Bonham suggests for Hawaii and the U.S. as a whole, change immigration policy to make it easier for foreign workers to migrate to Hawaii.
Peter Ho, chairman and chief executive of Bank of Hawaii, told Civil Beat — Hawaii’s population decline reflects a hollowing out of the state’s middle class, which he calls “an existential economic issue for the state.” He asserts that an economy needs either greater productivity and/or a growing population-workforce to have a vibrant economy.
Ho explains, while healthy retirees moving to the state and buying real estate boost Hawaii’s economy, they aren’t the same as younger people moving here, building companies, raising families and doing community service. “The middle class really punches over their weight economically,” he said.
Who is leaving?
In a Hawaii Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism (DBEDT) report titled “Brain Drain: Characteristics of Hawaii-Born Adults on the U.S. mainland,” it found that those leaving for the mainland are both younger and more educated.
The study found that almost 15% of Hawaii-born people living on the mainland are between the ages of 18 and 44 and have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 7.7% of those remaining in Hawaii. There are more Hawaii-born people with a bachelor’s degree or higher living on the mainland than there are who stay in the state.
DBEDT economist Wayne Liou wrote in the study, “Thus, brain drain of young, educated working-age adults appears to be non-trivial.”
Residents with higher levels of education, such as a master’s degree or beyond, were more likely to move out of the state, while those with education less than a high school diploma were the least mobile.
Why leave?
Hawaii residents list several reasons for leaving, typically for expanded career-work opportunities, more affordable housing (especially for first-time home buyers), lower overall cost of living, less taxes to pay, personal growth, or for family and relationships.
According to real estate firm Locations Hawaii, the median price of a home in Hawaii is one of the highest in the nation at $1.06 million last year. The median fluctuates and is back on the rise, realtors say.
Depending on how taxes are assessed, Hawaii usually comes in first or second in the nation. Hawaii’s cost of living also usually comes in the top five annually. The Living Wage Calculator from MIT states that an adult in Honolulu needs to make $22.76 per hour for a living wage. For a couple with 2 children, each adult needs to make $30.32 per hour.
Keli’i Akina, president and CEO of conservative think tank Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, said “For some time now, our neighbors, family and friends have been moving away to states such as Idaho, Arizona, Nevada, Utah and Texas, which have lower taxes and fewer regulations, and offer residents more freedoms and opportunities.”
Researchers believe as housing and other living expenses continue to rise, the trend of outmigration to the mainland will likely continue, and to be offset by slightly less incoming residents.
Hawaii’s outmigration has been ongoing for decades. One example, a Hawaii community has entrenched in Las Vegas, Nevada (known as Hawaii’s 9th island) that a substantial part of that city’s 12% Asian, mixed race and Native Hawaiian population are believed to be former Hawaii residents.
Mainland college recruiters have been successful in convincing Hawaii high school students to enroll on the mainland. In most big universities and colleges on the west and east coasts, there’s a Hawaii club. Wherever a University of Hawaii sports team plays on the mainland, they are supported by a large contingent of fans comprised of former Hawaii residents. Mainland job recruiters in trade, medicine and the police force among other industries have been known to tap into Hawaii’s workforce.
Maria Ramos, San Antonio, Texas is originally from Ewa Beach, Hawaii. Ramos told the Filipino Chronicle she’s been living on the mainland for over 30 years. She first left Hawaii in the early 1990s to attend college in the Midwest and met her future husband. After she graduated, she moved back to Hawaii while he finished up his degrees. She had part-time teaching jobs in Hawaii, but her future husband landed a full-time engineering position after graduating. They got married in Hawaii in the late 1990s. A week after their wedding, she moved back to the mainland to live with him.
“It was economically better for us to be on the mainland, especially as newlyweds starting our lives together. It was an adjustment but an adventure, too, and I ‘bloomed wherever I was planted.’ There is a bigger world out there to see and experience; leaving Hawaii was a great opportunity to grow,” Ramos said.
Michael Santo, formerly of Mililani, now lives in Seattle, Washington. Santo told the Filipino Chronicle he’s been away from Hawaii for 24 years. He left Hawaii in 2000 for a job promotion with his company. “I had been wanting to live on my own since graduating from college and this was a perfect opportunity as my company paid all my moving expenses and even helped me sell the condo I owned in Hawaii before moving.”
Marly Galindo, Bremerton, Washington, was born and raised in Wahiawa. “Growing up, I never had the opportunity to visit any place outside of the state, so studying hard and attending a mainland college was a goal of mine. I applied and was accepted to the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, where I graduated in 1983 with a civil engineering degree. I hoped then to return to Hawaii to apply for a permanent job.
“However, while attending college, I had the opportunity to work as a co-op student at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington. I loved working with the people there and chose to stay as a naval architect because of the job security in the civil service,” said Galindo.
Carla Ramirez, San Diego, California, grew up in Honolulu, left Hawaii 18 years ago to attend the University of San Diego, where she got her civil engineering bachelor’s and master’s degrees. She told the Filipino Chronicle “It was almost expected that I would leave for college on the mainland. I graduated from a private high school in Hawaii where most of my friends in high school left as well.”
Christopher Peralta, a former Honolulu resident now living in Portland, Oregon left Hawaii in 2009. Peralta told Grassroot Institute of Hawaii he left “because I was working three jobs and had nothing much to show for it. My home was a cinder block apartment with jalousies and my ride was a moped. I was working just to pay off the essentials: rent, bills, groceries and gas. Any savings I earned were easily swept away. I had time for friends and surfing, which I miss the most, but even that couldn’t keep me in the city. My move to Oregon was simply a financial one.”
State efforts to incentivize staying in Hawaii
Gov. Josh Green has made making more affordable housing one of his top priorities for his administration. He’s issued an emergency proclamation on housing and has aimed to streamline regulatory processes for the development of 50,000 housing units.
State Sen. Stanley Chang told Hawaii News Now, “The fundamental problem here in Hawaii is that every year we have about 13,000 high school seniors graduating. They’re adults, they’re ready to start their new lives. Unfortunately, every year we build about 2,000 units of housing,” Chang said.
“So, what we’re saying to our graduating seniors is, ‘It’s great that you may have been born and raised and educated here, but now that you’re an adult, you have to leave and you can never come back because this is not your home and will never be your home again,’” he said.
Chang explained that according to Hawaii’s current rate of building homes and units, “we don’t even build enough for even 20%” of the state’s graduating seniors.
“So, that’s why I’ve been so focused on increasing housing supply, even though I know there’s a lot of questions out there about how we can restrict demand,” Chang said.
“It will take time. None of this will happen overnight. But I do hope that in 5, 10 years — at some point, some number of years in the future, that we will have a pipeline of 10,000 or more units a year so that we’ll never be forcing people to make that horrible decision ever again,” Chang said.
Since 2020, DBEDT has aimed to create 38,000 new remote-work jobs through their Hawaii Remote Work Project, a pilot program meant to connect Hawaii residents and out-of-state employers.
Hawaii’s private sector is also working to keep locals at home. One program is called Movers and Shakas, that’s designed to attract, integrate and retain talented workers, especially returning kamaaina. The organization’s parent is the Hawaii Executive Collaborative. The Movers and Shakas is geared towards retaining and recruiting business talent.
To retain Hawaii workers in areas of critical demand, the Hawaii State Legislature signed into law a pilot program for residents to get a low-interest loan to bring down the cost of buying a home.
State Rep. Troy Hashimoto said, “We focused specifically on those who are in high need areas, teachers, farm workers, nurses, [etc.] because we wanted to make sure we keep those essential to our community here in Hawaii.”
Hawaii vs mainland
In an assessment comparing Hawaii to the mainland, LIVINGHAWAII.COM found that “The “middle class” in Hawaii lives at what their mainland counterparts would consider poverty levels. Many Hawaii families work several jobs, live paycheck to paycheck, have substandard (by mainland comparison) housing conditions, very little expendable income and at any moment are living on the financial edge.
“Put it simply, in Hawaii as of 2023 you need to be earning at least $150k a year to have what on the mainland can be had for $75k/yr. And if you have a larger family, you’ll need more and possibly a lot more income.”
The assessment stated Hawaii’s median pay is about 20% lower than what can be earned on the mainland. “So, you really end up taking a double hit: first you get hurt due to a much higher cost of living than nearly any other city and then you get whacked with a pay cut. Hawaii has the high costs of big mainland cities with pay scales of small, isolated towns and that’s a double whammy that’s hard to swallow.”
Assessing financing for a single-family home or condo in Hawaii, LIVINGHAWAII.COM stated “Unless you can put down approximately $200k and carry an $800k mortgage for a home (and that’s a “median” home) or come up with $130k and carry a $500k mortgage for a condo, forget about it.”
Ramos said of the benefits living on the mainland, “My dollars stretch more on the mainland than in Hawaii. There are also cheaper and more selections in stores, better access to health care, travel opportunities (Hawaii is so isolated!) and exposure to different cultures and experiences.”
She said some disadvantages on the mainland are “the unpredictable weather (although I look forward to the four seasons), sometimes the lack of Filipino and Asian restaurants (but I could buy ingredients online or my family and friends send me care packages from Hawaii and I cook the dishes myself) and racism. I think the latter is out of some people’s ignorance or curiosity. Some have never met a Filipina before and guessed that I am Mexican because of my Spanish colonial name. Some thought I was exotic because I come from Hawaii, and I brought back good memories of their vacations.”
Santo mentioned as benefits, “The cost of living, while high in Seattle, is still lower than in Hawaii. Here I can buy a single-family home on one income while in Hawaii I could only afford a condo. I have easier access to other parts of the country, so traveling is cheaper. There is also a sizeable population of Hawaii transplants here though most all seem to be private school graduates who are here for work opportunities. I haven’t met very many public-school graduates or people not from Hawaii Kai, Mililani or somewhere town side. By the way I went to private school and graduated from Loyola Marymount University. It’s not hard to find good local style food here, there are plenty of Hawaiian eateries and decent poke places as well. We even have four L & L Drive Inns here.”
As for disadvantages Santo said the traffic in Seattle is pretty bad and is worse than Honolulu. “It can also get pretty cold here and it rains a lot which makes part of the year pretty dreary,” he said.
Galindo said the mainland has economic advantages, mainly that housing is more affordable and there is no state income tax in Washington. “I have been blessed in my career to be able to travel throughout the mainland and a few foreign countries. I think if I had returned to Hawaii, the cost of housing and goods would have been a burden for me, and it would have restricted my ability to travel.”
Ramirez is enjoying her time on the mainland, starting a family and building her career. “There are abundant development and construction projects in California while in Hawaii because of limited land space it would be far less opportunities there.”
Family in Hawaii and chances of returning
What most Hawaii mainland transplants tend to miss most is the family they left behind. Some transplants now find themselves with other family members who also moved to the mainland. Others plan to return to their land of birth and youth to retire; while most have decided that they will stay on the mainland.
Ramos recalls when she first moved, “my parents and I missed each other when I moved far away from them! I was extremely homesick—and this was during a time before technology allowed us to communicate conveniently via email, text and videochat! But life must go on and we keep in touch as much as we can. We visit Hawaii on occasion, and they visit us on the mainland.”
She established a comfortable life and successful career on the mainland for 30-plus years and prefers to stay there and just visit Hawaii. “However, my parents are elderly and don’t have extended family so I would like to check on them frequently to make sure they are doing okay. Being closer to them is a deciding factor to come back. Overall, if Hawaii was affordable with more resources for local people, my husband and I would come home.”
Santo said the separation from his family was harder at first, but it has gotten a lot easier since the many available ways to communicate nowadays. His family goes to the mainland every year to visit him, or he will go back to Hawaii to be with them, he said. “It also helps that I have a nephew at Loyola Marymount University now, so I’ll go down to Los Angeles a couples times a year to see family.”
Santo has grown accustomed to living in Seattle and enjoys it, he said. “I may just have residences in both Hawaii and Washington and shuttle between them during the year.”
Galindo is retired and still has family in Hawaii. “I am looking for an opportunity to return, once I decide to sell my house and move back in with my mother and sister. Part of what’s holding me back is that I will need to find a new health insurance plan because the one I have now is not applicable to many doctors in Hawaii. I left Hawaii for higher education and took advantage of the opportunities here on the mainland. There’s no place like Hawaii. It is still my dream to spend my last chapter on earth there,” he said.
Ramirez frequently flies home to Hawaii. “My parents visit me several times a year. I also have siblings, cousins and uncles all from Hawaii who’ve made it here to settle in all parts of California, both in northern and southern Cal, so I’m not homesick for family in between my busy work schedule. We have many food establishments that cater to the Hawaii locals here so it’s easy to get Hawaii and Filipino food. But Hawaii is still very special. It’s where I have loads of memories growing up. What I miss is the Hawaii culture. California is diverse also. But Hawaii culture, that sense of aloha, there’s nowhere like it. I’m fine the way it is right now and I’m too young to be thinking about retirement. But, of course, I’d never rule out returning to Hawaii in my retirement with my husband. It’s still paradise for me.”
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