About the Dashboard

Why This Dashboard

Hawaiʻi has no shortage of data. What it lacks is an honest answer to a simple question: how are we doing in Hawaiʻi?

This dashboard aims to fill that gap.

It is a statewide scorecard of outcomes and the conditions that shape them, tracking “critical few” measures across housing, health, education, economy, and workforce to provide a clearer view of how Hawaiʻi is doing overall, and where the state is ahead or falling behind compared to the rest of the nation.

Whether you’re a resident, a journalist, a student, or a policymaker - the numbers are the same. Draw your own conclusions.

Who Is This For

The dashboard is useful to anyone trying to understand how Hawaiʻi is doing. Here is how different audiences may use it.

Two limits apply to every audience: the dashboard tracks resident outcomes and conditions, not government activity or policy inputs; and only 11 of the 26 metrics include county-level breakdowns. That makes it strong for benchmarking and priority-setting, but weaker for proving that a specific policy caused a specific result.

Why These 26 Metrics

Every metric on this dashboard must pass eight criteria. A metric that fails any one of them is excluded, regardless of how interesting it might be.

1. Important to residents. Captures something that directly affects daily life in Hawaiʻi: safety, health, cost of living, jobs, education, infrastructure.
2. What people live with, not what government does. Measures what residents actually experience and the conditions that shape those experiences, not government activity or output. For example: we track the violent crime rate (the outcome a resident feels) and primary care physician access (the condition that shapes health outcomes), not the number of police officers hired (activity) or arrests made (output).
3. Influenced by state policy. The state government has meaningful levers to move the needle, whether through legislation, regulation, funding, or executive action.
4. Consistent and nonpartisan. Sourced from authoritative federal agencies or established nonpartisan research organizations (FBI, Census Bureau, BLS, BEA, CDC, EIA, HUD, NCES, HRSA, FHWA, and others) that report data using the same methodology for all 50 states.
5. Long time series. Available over enough years to show real trends, that separates signal from noise. Most metrics span multiple decades.
6. Clear direction. Every metric has an unambiguous "better" or "worse" direction. No metrics where reasonable people would disagree on the goal.
7. Non-redundant. Each metric tells a distinct part of the story. We avoid stacking multiple metrics that say the same thing.
8. A “critical few”. Most state dashboards track scores of metrics, suitable for researchers. For residents, too much data obscures as much as too little. Also, not all metrics are created equal. These 26 cover the key dimensions of resident well-being without losing the signal.

Of the 26 metrics, 11 also include county-level breakdowns (Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, Maui, and Kauaʻi) where the underlying federal data supports it, allowing for more granular analysis within the state.

How We Compare

"Median" is the 50-state mathematical median, including Hawaiʻi. DC and Puerto Rico are excluded. For even-count distributions, the median is the average of the two middle values. We use median rather than mean because state distributions are often right-skewed, and a few outlier states would pull the mean away from what a typical state looks like.

All data comes from federal agencies and established public research organizations that report consistently across all 50 states.

"Better" and "Worse" reflect the direction of each metric. Lower crime and unemployment are better, while higher graduation rates and incomes are better.

Rankings run from #1 (best) to #50 (worst).

Tiers. For each metric, we group the 50 states into three tiers by rank: Top tier (top third, ranks 1–16), Middle tier (middle third, ranks 17–33), and Bottom tier (bottom third, ranks 34–50). The label is direction-aware, so "Top tier" always reads as good for the state, whether higher or lower values are better on that metric. The same tier vocabulary is used on the card-tile verdict, the modal rank chart, the rank-history chart, the modal "Copy brief" sentence, and the OG share image for each metric, so the framing reads the same way wherever a resident sees it.

Inflation adjustment. Per Capita Income is shown in constant 2017 dollars using BEA's Real Personal Income (SARPI) methodology. This adjusts for both regional price differences (RPPs) and national inflation (PCE price index), so every year and every state can be compared on equal footing. A flat line means no real income growth. Details: BEA Real Personal Income methodology.

5-year change. The card-tile "vs prior window" verdict and the modal Bottom Line trend phrase both compare two 3-year rolling-average windows: the most recent three years vs the three years before that. 2020 and 2021 are excluded from both windows because the COVID shock and snapback distort normal-times comparisons (unemployment spiked to 11.6% in 2020, labor-force participation collapsed, business formation swung). When that exclusion fires, the windows pin to the pre-pandemic and post-pandemic sides (typical shape: 2022–24 vs 2017–19); the year-range label on the card reflects the actual years used, and the Bottom Line phrase appends "(2020–21 excluded)".

Metric Registry

All 26 metrics, grouped by source, with what you need to know about each one.

Governor Terms

Detail charts show alternating bands indicating which governor was in office. This provides political context and highest level of accountability without implying causation.

Update Log

May 2026: Daily question bank expanded to 54 questions. Monthly tickers advanced to April 2026 (unemployment, labor force participation) and March 2026 (electricity price, renewables share). County unemployment revised back to 2021 per BLS LAUS. Data pipeline hardened against silent metric drops.

April 2026: Added monthly update callouts for unemployment rate, labor force participation, electricity price, and renewables share.

March 2026: Initial launch with 26 metrics across 5 areas.

Checked monthly; source data is updated on each source's own schedule.