Hawaii’s Emerging Industries
By: DBEDT
In 2009, DBEDT Research compiled and published a performance review of Hawaii’s targeted industry portfolio. The portfolio consisted of several dozen economic activities that had been suggested, proposed or actively promoted over the past several decades as potential new growth industries. The purpose of the review was to better define those activities for measurement purposes and to find out which had performed best in recent years. This report is the 14th update of the 2009 report within the 2020-2030 period.
The activities were grouped into four performance categories.
Base-growth activities rated the highest on the basis of State and national performance and were more concentrated in Hawaii’s economy than the nation overall. Industries in this category had developed a competitive national advantage and were probably exporting some proportion of industry output.
Emerging activities also rated high on performance but had not reached a level of concentration that would as yet suggest a competitive advantage.
Transitioning activities in the portfolio were showing growth in jobs over the measurement period (and in some cases impressive growth), but were outperformed by the same activity nationally, suggesting that Hawai‘i was not as competitive.
Declining activities lost jobs over the measurement period and in most cases (but not all) were less competitive than their national counterpart.
