The point is that almost 1/4 of the entire Hawaii population DOES NOT WORK as they are on welfare, not the 12% you claim. Then you have another 30% of the population in Hawaii that are government employees. Technically, you have almost 300,000 actual people working (excluding retirees on retirement income) and supporting the ~2/3rds of the massive welfare state so yes, the unemployment rate is low but the fact still remains that Hawaii has more people on welfare than workers when you factor in government employees from which 100% of their income is derived from taxes paid by the 1/3rd that is actually working!