The employment estimates compiled by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) measure the number of full- and part-time employees, plus the number of proprietors of unincorporated businesses. People holding more than one job are counted in the employment estimates for each job they hold. This means BEA employment estimates represent a job count, not a number-of-people employed count. Also, BEA employment is by place-of-work, rather than by place-of-residence. Therefore, the jobs held by residents living outside Hawaii but who commute to work in Hawaii are included in the employment (or job) count for Hawaii.

For some areas, an industry category labeled "Other/Suppressed Industries" may appear in the table. It is not uncommon, especially for smaller areas, to encounter suppressed data for selected industries. Data are suppressed to avoid disclosure of confidential information regarding individual firms. Even though the concern for confidentiality may relate to only one industry, data for at least two must be suppressed as summing over the reported data and subtracting from the total yields data for the suppressed category. When suppressed data is encountered, it is reported in the "Other/Suppressed Industries" category.

Location quotients help gauge the extent to which various industries are more or less concentrated locally when compared with the nation at large. If an industry's share of total employment is the same as the national share, then its location quotient is equal to one. If an industry is concentrated in a region, its local employment share will be larger than the share nationally, and its location quotient will correspondingly be greater than one. Conversely, the location quotient for an industry not concentrated in the region will fall between zero and one.

The component contribution isolates and records each industry's individual contribution to the total growth of employment in Hawaii over 2022, and 2002-2022, respectively. When summed over all industries the component contribution will match Hawaii's TOTAL employment growth rate.