BUSINESS BRIEFS
Ag workforce down 3 percent
Advertiser Staff and News Services
Hawai'i's agricultural workforce fell to 6,600 in April, a 3 percent drop from the same month a year ago, according to a report from the National Agricultural Statistics Service.
Diversified agriculture accounted for 82 percent of all farm labor at 5,400 workers, up 2 percent from the same week a year earlier, according to the report. Pineapple and sugarcane workers totaled 1,200, down 20 percent from a year earlier. Many of those job losses were the result of Del Monte's decision to shut down its O'ahu pineapple operations last year, a move that eliminated 551 jobs.
The average wage paid to all hired workers during the April survey was a record-high $12.85 an hour, up 89 cents an hour from April 2006. The average wage for field and livestock workers also reached a new record high at $10.77, up 84 cents an hour from a year earlier.
JOB ADS EXCEED JOBLESS NUMBER
The number of Hawai'i Internet help-wanted advertisements in May continued to outnumber the total of unemployed people here, according to a New York-based business research group.
The Conference Board found there were 0.88 unemployed people in the state for every online job ad during the month. That tied Hawai'i with Nevada for the lowest ratio in the country.
In December Hawai'i's ratio was 0.77, the lowest in the nation. That mirrored Hawai'i's unemployment rate, which was under 2 percent in December.
FCC REBUKES KANE'OHE STATION
The Federal Communications Commission yesterday admonished Kane'ohe TV station KPXO for failing to identify the target age range of its programming to TV programming guide publishers.
KPXO admitted the violation in a broadcast license renewal application. KPXO's cable broadcast appears on Oceanic Time Warner's channel 27.
