An estimated 15,080 Hawai'i residents were pushed into poverty last year, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report.

Hawai'i was one of only eight states with significant increases in the ranks of the poor during a year of recessionary pressure.

Hawai'i's estimated poverty rate rose to 9.1 percent last year from 8 percent a year earlier.

The state's poverty rate last year represents 115,131 people, compared with 100,051 people a year before.

While poverty is on the rise in the Islands, Hawai'i still has a much lower poverty rate than the nation as a whole. The national rate was 13.2 percent last year, up 0.2 percentage points from 2007. Hawai'i's 9.1 percent poverty rate was fifth lowest among states.

It's no surprise that poverty rose last year, given the proliferation of job losses and wage cuts that spread across the state during the first full year of the U.S. recession that has hurt tourism and other sectors of Hawai'i's economy.

"It has gotten worse for us," said Sandra Oba, director of development and communications for Child & Family Service, a nonprofit that helps more than 40,000 people statewide meet basic needs, including food and shelter.

Hawai'i unemployment rose from roughly full employment around 3 percent at the beginning of last year to about 5 percent by the end of the year. This year, unemployment has been running around 7 percent.

Many charitable service providers believe census data tends to undercount such issues as poverty because people living below the poverty line are harder to reach or less willing to participate in such surveys.

The new census data on poverty is from the agency's American Community Survey, an annual supplement to the more thorough census reports every decade.

The American Community Survey was based on a sample of about 3 million people nationwide. The relatively small sample produced margins of error that for most states were larger than the estimated change in the poverty rate. In those cases, the agency regarded the results as statistically insignificant.

Only 11 states had statistically significant results. Of the 11, eight states had increases in the poverty rate. The largest increase was 1.4 percentage point in Connecticut. Florida and Hawai'i were next with increases of 1.1 percentage point, followed by California with a 0.9 percentage point increase.

The margin of error for Hawai'i was plus or minus 11,288 people, or 0.9 percent.

Mississippi had the highest poverty rate at 21.2 percent. New Hampshire had the lowest rate at 7.6 percent.