Carolyn Woo lives with that financial reality on a daily basis.

She works a full-time job at the Ala Moana Hotel and part-time jobs at the Hale Koa hotel and the Hawai'i Convention Center. With three jobs, her workweek averages about 55 hours.

"They say Hawai'i tourism is No. 1 right now," said Woo, who is a supervisor in hotel food preparation earning about $17 an hour. "Then how come we can't get better pay?"

Woo is among the thousands of moderately paid service workers juggling multiple jobs in the state's largest industry to cope with the high cost of living in Hawai'i.

Their predicament is a major reason why diversifying the economy by generating higher-paying jobs has importance beyond curing the state's lopsided dependence on tourism.

For now, tourism has a significant presence in Hawai'i, and its up-and-down cycles directly affect the workers who make the beds, wait on tables and carry the luggage.

In 2002, the latest figures available, average annual pay in the hotel industry in Honolulu was $29,777, according to an analysis of federal labor statistics by the AFL-CIO's Working for America Institute. That average is lower than for New York and Washington D.C., but higher than for many other cities, including Las Vegas, San Francisco and Miami.

A strong union presence, prevalence of high-end hotels and improving occupancy rates are among the factors keeping Hawai'i hotel industry wages relatively high compared to other destinations.

Yet the pay from one hotel industry job is still too low to comfortably pay bills here.

"It's not easy, you know," said Woo, who is divorced and has four grown children. "To buy a home, you really need money, and you need jobs."

The cost of living in Honolulu is the fourth highest in the nation behind Manhattan, Jersey City and San Francisco, according to the ACCRA cost-of-living index. The expense has driven many to the Mainland, where salaries are often higher and everything from groceries to gas is lower.

"Does (higher pay in Honolulu) make up for the difference in cost of living? It comes close but I'm not sure it completely does," said Lawrence Boyd, a labor economist for the University of Hawai'i's Center for Labor Education and Research.

The cost of living is so much lower in Las Vegas that wages go a lot further, said Jason Ward, a spokes-

man for the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union, Local 5.

Unlike Las Vegas, Hawai'i doesn't have lower-cost suburbs that allow workers to escape the expense of urban life and commute into a city for work.

"The cost of living is high throughout the Islands," Ward said. "Most of our members have second jobs and in some cases third jobs. I think that people having second jobs is more common here than in other cities."

From Boyd's perspective as well, more people in the Islands seem to be working two jobs, particularly restaurant workers.

There is no state statistic to confirm their observation, but according to union representatives possibly thousands of workers in the tourism industry work more than one job to make ends meet. Single parents are particularly driven to work multiple jobs, they said.

Ward said wages will likely play a more significant role in the coming 2006 labor negotiations covering Hawai'i hotel workers than in the past, when job security in a struggling economy took priority.

Woo, for example, knows several hotel industry workers who moved to Las Vegas because they wanted to buy homes. And she knows dozens more who work multiple jobs to make a life here.

"They work no matter how hard it is," she said.

After seeing so many others toil day and night shifts, she admits she's worried about the long-term effects on herself of working the long hours.

"A lot of the women that do two jobs like that usually get ill, and they get doctor bills," Woo said. She said her kids tell her, "Why don't you just work one job already?"

But Woo said she needs to work multiple jobs as long as her health allows so that she can help pay for her grandson's college expenses as her son recovers from drug problems.

Relief in part may come from the growing cruise industry, which is increasing local demand for workers with hotel experience. Many could well live on the wages and benefits of a single shipboard job.

Norwegian Cruise Line expects by 2006 to hire 3,000 U.S. workers, most from Hawai'i, for its inter-island cruises.

"You have a huge effect on the labor market whenever you get into the thousand number" of people hired, Boyd said.

"I think you're going to have fewer people working double jobs and I think it's going to raise wages in those industries."