HONOLULU (KHON2) — It’s no secret that tourism numbers are tumbling in Hawaiʻi.
The Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism’s (DBEDT) monthly statistics on tourism provide a pretty clear picture of how money and people are averaging out.
So, KHON2.com did a deep dive into the numbers for June between 2018 and 2025 from DBEDT. This is what we found.
Hawaiʻi’s June 2025 visitor numbers are in the process of being finalized, and early signs point to steady results. In June 2024, the state welcomed 872,620 visitors. That was 1.9% fewer than the year before. Visitor spending in June 2024 totaled $1.91 billion, a 4.4% drop from June 2023.
The highest recorded June visitor count was in 2019 with about 951,000 arrivals. The lowest came in 2020 during the pandemic, when just 17,000 visitors arrived. By June 2022, arrivals had reached about 846,000. The peak in visitor spending came in June 2023 with an estimated $2 billion.
Though arrivals in 2024 were below pre-pandemic levels, total spending stayed higher than in 2018 and 2019. June 2024 spending was 17% above June 2019. These numbers do not account for inflation.
Hawaiʻi’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in June 2025 was 2.8%. That is lower than June 2024, when the non-seasonally adjusted rate was 3.3%. In June 2023, the rate was about 3.4%.
There were 669,750 people employed in June 2025 out of a labor force of 689,100. That includes both full-time and part-time workers. In June 2024, there were 635,700 non-agricultural wage and salary jobs. That was a 0.3% increase from the year before.
The number of non-agricultural jobs in June 2018 was about 662,000. That number fell sharply in 2020 to around 541,000 before rising each year to the current level.
Key points across eight years
- Visitor arrivals fell in 2020 and rose again by 2023 and reaching about 889,000.
- Spending has risen more sharply and climbed from about $1.57 billion in 2018 to nearly $2 billion by 2023.
- Unemployment was lowest in 2018 at around 2.1%.
- It peaked in 2020 at about 13.9% and has fallen each year since.
- By 2025, it returned to a low point of 2.8% seasonally adjusted.
- Employment has grown since the pandemic, though the pace has slowed.
- In 2025, jobs are near 2018 and 2019 levels.
You can click here to access DBEDT’s tourism counts.
Tourism in Hawaiʻi has mostly recovered from the sharp drop in 2020. Visitor counts remain slightly below the peak year of 2019, but total spending is higher than ever before.
Meanwhile, unemployment in 2025 is the lowest it has been in at least seven years, with strong job recovery across sectors.