And these are supposed to be the good times.

Hawai'i's unemployment rate has hovered around 3 percent for much of the year to lead the country for the past five months.

But in a curious twist of Hawai'i's economy, workers in what is supposed to be a red-hot construction industry by far lead all categories of workers in filing monthly unemployment claims this year.

No other industry has seen even 1,000 new monthly claims. But construction workers averaged 2,154 new claims per month from January through September, according to the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations.

Hawai'i's construction industry employs an estimated 26,700 workers. The high number of unemployment claims this year came as a shock even to many in an industry accustomed to frequent periods of unemployment triggered by weather and slowdowns.

The unemployment claims also made some of them wonder about the strength of Hawai'i's highly touted construction boom.

"We're still waiting for the boom," said John McGill, the owner of Electrical Contractors Hawaii.

McGill laid off half of his 20 employees over the past month because his government housing project at Hickam Air Force Base was delayed a year.

"We have a lot of work lined up," McGill said. "It just hasn't started yet."

McGill pays about $4,300 per month for unemployment insurance to cover his workforce. To McGill, it's merely part of the price of doing business.

Overall, about $31 million in unemployment benefits were paid out to construction workers in 2003, according to the labor department. The payments represented about 29 percent of all unemployment claims.

Hawai'i's trade unions have a term for workers collecting unemployment. They call it being "on the bench."

And the number of construction workers on the bench this year has some of them rethinking the emphasis they and government officials have placed on recruiting new apprentices for a predicted 7,000 new construction jobs over the next five years.

"These (unemployment) numbers definitely add a new wrinkle," said Bruce Coppa, director of Pacific Resource Partnership, an advocacy group for union contractors. "Yeah, we're concerned. That's 2,000 people that could get back into the industry. These guys are on the bench while we're busy trying to train new people and get high school students interested in our industry."

Gary Wiseman, president of Associated Builders and Contractors, an association of non-union construction companies, called the labor department's unemployment numbers "interesting, but not surprising."

"This tells us that there are still people out there trained and ready for work," Wiseman said. "The trick is finding them. You've got one company that just laid off some people while there's another company looking for them."

Unemployed Mark Kapahu comes to the carpenters union hall with all his tools in his pickup truck just in case he gets called for a job. Kapahu, 48, has been out of work for more than a month.

Workers said they're accustomed to being laid off when their part of a job is over or when the rainy season hits. Thousands of workers were also idled by a 58-day O'ahu concrete strike that spread across February, March and April — when construction unemployment claims peaked for an average of 2,748 new claims per month.

Lawrence Boyd, a labor economist with the University of Hawai'i-West O'ahu, also blames Hawai'i's isolation.

"On the Mainland, it isn't unusual to see construction workers commuting 100 miles or more to a job site," Boyd said. "That's impossible here. You're on the bench until the next job comes along."

"A few, really poor crafts people will try to milk the system," Coppa said. "If they can work six weeks and get six weeks off, they figure, why not? But they are definitely the minority. The majority are simply caught in that transition between ending one job and starting another."

Most of them are like Mark Kapahu, 48, who has been out of work for more than a month.

In a union hall filled with unemployed carpenters, union officials last week pointed out Kapahu as one of their most-skilled, hardest workers. They said it's a tragedy that people like him have been out of work this year as often as they've been on a job site.

Kapahu earns the journeyman maximum of $33 an hour, which translates into take-home pay of $700 per week. Kapahu would much rather work, because unemployment insurance pays him only $800 every two weeks.

The last time Kapahu was employed an entire year was in 2002.

But Kapahu, who has more than 20 years in Hawai'i's construction industry, considers these good times compared to the 1990s.

"It's a rough trade," said Kapahu, father of a 10-year-old girl. "You have to juggle your finances. I'm not saying we're eating pork and beans and rice, but you have to be very careful. Very, very careful."

Last week Kapahu answered a "job call" at the carpenters union hall for a company merely looking to interview six potential workers to build concrete forms for a Waikiki high-rise condominium.

There were no jobs offered at the union hall the day before, and only two the day before that.

Just the possibility of interviewing for a job had Kapahu waiting more than an hour to see if his number — 146 — would be called.

It wasn't.