The Cost of Living in Hawaii

Two jobs. One roof. No savings. That's the math for too many local families and it's not an accident.

You already know the cost of living is high. You live it at the Foodland register, at the gas pump, and on the twenty-seventh of the month when the electric bill lands.

What you may not know is how much of it is a choice, made in a building on Beretania Street, session after session, by people who will tell you it couldn't be helped.

Hawaiʻi is the most expensive state in the United States. Our utility costs run roughly 83% above the national average, the highest in the country. Groceries run about 30% above mainland prices. And this state taxes the food you feed your keiki.

Some of that is the Pacific Ocean. A lot of it is the Legislature.

What it actually costs to live here

Electricity: Hawaiʻi has the highest residential electric rates in America, more than double the national average, and the largest year-over-year rate increase of any state in 2026.

Groceries: Roughly 30% above mainland prices, because 85–90% of what we eat travels 2,500 miles by ocean freight before it hits the shelf.

Housing: The single largest line in nearly every household budget, with a statewide median home price near the top of the nation.

Everything else: Every shipping cost, every tax, and every fee is embedded in the price on the tag. It compounds.

Where your money actually goes

A tax on groceries and medicine

Most states exempt food and prescription medicine from sales tax. Hawaiʻi doesn't. Our General Excise Tax applies to nearly everything, including the rice, the milk, and the prescriptions your kūpuna depend on.

It's called a 4% tax. On Oʻahu with the county surcharge, the effective rate consumers pay runs closer to 4.712%. And because the GET applies at every stage of a transaction rather than only at the register, it gets charged on the wholesaler, then the distributor, then the retailer and every one of those layers is baked into your final price. You are paying tax on the tax.

This hits the lowest-income families hardest. A family spending most of its paycheck on necessities pays this tax on nearly every dollar. A family with money to invest doesn't.

The highest electric bills in America

Hawaiʻi's grid is isolated and heavily dependent on imported fuel. That's geography. But the permitting timeline for new generation, the regulatory process at the PUC, and the rules governing rooftop solar interconnection are all policy and all of them slow down the projects that would actually lower your bill.

Families who put solar on their roof cut their bills dramatically. Government should be clearing the path to that, not adding switchbacks.

Shipping law written for someone else

Federal maritime law requires that goods shipped between U.S. ports travel on U.S.-built, U.S.-flagged, U.S.-crewed vessels. For a state that imports the overwhelming majority of its food and fuel, that's a permanent surcharge on every carton of eggs and every gallon of gas. Hawaiʻi's delegation should be fighting for an exemption for our islands. Instead, the issue barely comes up.

The result: our people are leaving

Hawaiʻi's population has fallen every year since 2020, and the reason isn't mysterious. In one recent year, 8,876 residents moved from Hawaiʻi to another state, enough that only Vermont and Puerto Rico lost a larger share of their populations.

They're not leaving the beaches, the mountains, or the aloha. They're leaving the bill.

Our plan to lower the cost of living in Hawaiʻi

1. Exempt groceries and prescription medicine from the GET

Hawaiʻi should stop taxing food and medicine. Full stop. It is the single most direct, most immediate relief available to working families, and every session it goes unpassed is a choice.

2. End GET pyramiding

Stop charging the tax on the tax. Exempt business-to-business transactions so the cost isn't multiplied three times before it reaches you. Small businesses on Main Street pay this compounding; the biggest vertically integrated players don't.

3. Index tax brackets to inflation

When inflation pushes your pay up but your buying power down, you shouldn't get promoted into a higher tax bracket for it. Bracket creep is a tax increase nobody voted for.

4. Attack energy costs at the source

Streamline permitting for new generation and storage, protect and expand rooftop solar access, and require the PUC to weigh ratepayer affordability explicitly in every rate decision. Families should not be asked to absorb another increase on the highest bills in the nation.

5. Audit every fee, surcharge, and assessment

A full public inventory of every state fee and surcharge, what it funds, and what it costs a median household per year. Sunset the ones that can't justify themselves.

6. Fight for a Jones Act exemption for Hawaiʻi

Our congressional delegation should be leading on this. If they won't, we'll send people who will.

7. Build housing: because rent is the biggest bill of all

No cost-of-living plan is serious without a housing plan. See our plan for affordable housing in Hawaiʻi

Affordability is not a partisan issue. It's a math issue.

You don't have to agree with Republicans about everything to notice that the party running this state for sixty years has produced the highest cost of living in America and a shrinking population.

Competition improves everything grocery stores, airlines, and legislatures. Hawaiʻi has had a monopoly for too long, and monopolies don't lower prices.

Your bills are a policy choice. Change the policy.

Is Hawaii the most expensive state to live in?
Yes. Hawaiʻi consistently ranks as the most expensive state in the nation across major cost-of-living indices, driven primarily by housing, utilities, and groceries.
Why is electricity so expensive in Hawaii?
Each island runs an isolated grid with no mainland interconnection, and much of our generation still relies on imported petroleum shipped across the Pacific. Hawaiʻi has the highest residential electric rates in the country, more than double the national average. Permitting delays for new generation and storage keep lower-cost supply from coming online faster.
Does Hawaii tax groceries?
Yes. Unlike most states, Hawaiʻi's General Excise Tax applies to food and prescription medicine. Because the GET is levied at multiple points in the supply chain rather than only at the register, the effective cost to consumers compounds.
Why are groceries so expensive in Hawaii?
Roughly 85–90% of consumer goods are shipped about 2,500 miles by ocean freight, and federal maritime law restricts that trade to U.S.-built and U.S.-crewed vessels. Those costs are embedded in shelf prices, then taxed again under the GET. Groceries run roughly 30% above mainland prices.
Are people leaving Hawaii because of the cost of living?
Hawaiʻi has lost population every year since 2020, with roughly 8,900 more residents moving to other states than arriving in a single recent year. Cost of living housing above all is the most commonly cited driver.

The Cost of Living in Hawaii