Hawai'i unemployment rate climbs to 4.5% in Sept.
Advertiser Staff
Hawai'i's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in September reached 4.5 percent, the highest in more than six years.
Last month's jobless rate was 0.3 percentage point higher than August and a 1.7 percentage point increase over September 2007.
Not since February 2002 has the state's unemployment rate topped 4.5 percent, and the outlook isn't very bright as economists have predicted that the rate could hit 4.9 percent by the end of the year.
Nationally, the unemployment rate remained unchanged in September at 6.1 percent when compared with the previous month. A year earlier, the nation's jobless rate was 4.7 percent.
