Hawai'i's unemployment and underemployment situation has worsened substantially, with a big jump in the number of part-time workers who want full-time positions.

A new report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics shows an average of 14.5 percent of the workforce here were either without jobs or worked fewer hours than they wanted during the 12 months that began in October 2008.

That's roughly equivalent to one in seven during the past year who were unemployed, discouraged from looking for work, and those who work fewer hours than they would like.

The figure is also twice as much as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' traditional unemployment rate, which has a narrower definition of who is jobless.

Hawai'i's unemployment rate has been hovering around the 7 percent range, but doesn't include people who are considered discouraged (they've given up searching for jobs because they believe no work is available) or people wanting more hours than their part-time job provides.

"Perhaps the official unemployment numbers are not fully capturing how much this recession is affecting Hawai'i's labor markets and workers," said Andrew Kato, a former Bureau of Labor Statistics economist who is now a specialist with the University of Hawai'i Economic Research Organization.

"Even those who still have a job can be in dire straits. For workers on hourly wages, having your hours cut when you are willing to work more can hurt just as much as a wage cut."

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, in an effort to gain more perspectives of the labor market performance, produces six measures of labor utilization. For states, it reports the figures on a rolling 12-month basis, with the most recent report looking at a time span ranging from the fourth quarter of 2008 to the end of the third quarter in 2009.

The measures range from a very limited definition of joblessness (only those who've been unemployed 15 weeks or longer) to the broadest measure, which includes people who have part-time jobs but only because they can't get full-time hours.

At the end of 2008, this last measure, known as U-6, stood at 8.8 percent. The increase to 14.5 percent at the end of September tracks with a rise in the traditional measure of unemployment in Hawai'i as the economy slumped into a recession.

Labor Economist Lawrence "Bill" Boyd said the state's employment situation doesn't appear as rosy when looking at the U-6 measure. Hawai'i's unemployment rate has been about 2 percentage points lower than the national rate each month.

But the state is much closer to the national average when examining the broader U-6 figures. Hawai'i's 14.5 percent compares to the 15.2 percent national average over the same period.

"If you look at the U-6 number, you would say we're much closer to the national average in terms of problems with the labor market," said Boyd, who serves on the faculty for the Center for Labor Education and Research at the University of Hawai'i-West O'ahu.

"The U-6 number is a good measure of actual pain. When you have one in seven being underemployed it means your economy is basically off by that."

But while it is the broadest measure of disruption in labor markets, U-6 doesn't cover everything, such as people who've had their pay lowered but still work the same hours, Boyd said.

Moreover, Boyd said he is curious whether furloughs for state workers will be captured by the measure.

Kato compared the U-6 numbers with those for the Bureau of Labor Statistics' U-5 measure, which includes all categories of unemployment but doesn't include "involuntary part-time" workers. The difference between the two indicates the number of folks who want more hours.

He said the difference between U-6 and U-5 amounted to 6.1 percentage points, one of the largest nationwide.

"Only 11 states have U-5 to U-6 differences at least as large as Hawai'i has, and that list of states reads like a who's who of troubled economies: The subprime meltdown states like California, Nevada, Arizona, and Florida are on the list," Kato wrote in an e-mail.

Moreover, he said the gap's significance is magnified by the fact that Hawai'i had lower unemployment than the other 11 states, Kato wrote.