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Lawai, HI

This is a small community in a single neighborhood. As throughout the site, some neighborhood-level data are reserved for subscribers.





Overview


Lawai is a very small coastal town (i.e. on the ocean, a bay, or inlet) located in the state of Hawaii. With a population of 2,578 people and just one neighborhood, Lawai is the 46th largest community in Hawaii.

Housing costs in Lawai are among some of the highest in the nation, although real estate prices here don't compare to real estate prices in the most expensive communities in Hawaii.

Occupations and Workforce

Unlike some towns where white-collar or blue-collar occupations dominate the local economy, Lawai is neither predominantly one nor the other. Instead, it has a mixed workforce of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Lawai is a town of service providers, professionals, and managers. There are especially a lot of people living in Lawai who work in food service (11.85%), business and financial occupations (8.38%), and sales jobs (7.75%).

Of important note, Lawai is also a town of artists. Lawai has more artists, designers and people working in media than 90% of the communities in America. This concentration of artists helps shape Lawai’s character.

A relatively large number of people in Lawai telecommute to their jobs. Overall, about 16.60% of the workforce works from home. While this may seem like a small number, as a fraction of the total workforce it ranks among the highest in the country. These workers are often telecommuters who work in knowledge-based, white-collar professions. For example, Silicon Valley has large numbers of people who telecommute. Other at-home workers may be self-employed people who operate small businesses out of their homes.

Setting & Lifestyle

One of the nice things about Lawai is that it is nautical, which means that parts of it are somewhat historic and touch the ocean or tidal bodies of water, such as inlets and bays. Because of this, visitors and locals will often go to these areas to take in the scenery or to enjoy waterfront activities.

Even though Lawai is a smaller town, it has many people who hop on public transportation – mostly the bus for their daily commute to work. Typically, these people are commuting to good jobs in the surrounding cities.

Demographics

The education level of Lawai citizens is very high relative to the national average among all cities (21.84%): 34.95% of adults in Lawai have a bachelor's degree or even advanced degree.

The per capita income in Lawai in 2018 was $34,742, which is lower middle income relative to Hawaii, and middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $138,968 for a family of four. However, Lawai contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.

Lawai is an extremely ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Lawai home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Lawai residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Lawai also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 21.36% of the town’s residents. Important ancestries of people in Lawai include Italian, English, German, Portuguese, and Irish.

The most common language spoken in Lawai is English. Other important languages spoken here include Pacific Island languages and Spanish.

Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics

The way a neighborhood looks and feels when you walk or drive around it, from its setting, its buildings, and its flavor, can make all the difference. This neighborhood has some really cool things about the way it looks and feels as revealed by NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research. This might include anything from the housing stock to the types of households living here to how people get around.

Real Estate

Do you like a coastal setting? If so, this neighborhood may be to your liking. The neighborhood is on the ocean, a bay, or inlet. Often such coastal places have amenities and recreational activities on the waterfront that are attractive to residents and visitors alike. In addition to being coastal, is a very nautical neighborhood, meaning that it is somewhat historic, walkable, densely populated and on the water. This gives the neighborhood a very nautical feel, with some seaside and shipping feel, which some may really enjoy the sights and sounds of.

Occupations

There are more people living in the neighborhood employed as sales and service workers (61.6%) than almost any neighborhood in the country. From fast-food service workers to major sales accounts, sales and service workers make up the largest proportion of our national employment picture. But despite that size and importance nationally, this neighborhood still stands out as unique due to the dominance of people living here who work in such occupations.

People

If you're nearing retirement age, or in retirement, the is an excellent choice for you to consider for top-quality retirement living. This neighborhood is rated by NeighborhoodScout as among the top 7.8% of retiree-friendly neighborhoods in Hawaii, combining peace and quiet, safety from crime, and offering diverse housing options from which retirees can choose. Maybe it's because of these amenities that a large proportion of the residents here are college educated seniors, mixed with other age groups. For these and other reasons, NeighborhoodScout identifies this neighborhood as a top-notch place to consider if you are thinking of or planning to retire in Hawaii.

Diversity

Did you know that the neighborhood has more Portuguese ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 7.8% of this neighborhood's residents have Portuguese ancestry.

is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 2.3% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Japanese at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 99.2% of the neighborhoods in America.

The Neighbors

There are two complementary measures for understanding the income of a neighborhood's residents: the average and the extremes. While a neighborhood may be relatively wealthy overall, it is equally important to understand the rate of people - particularly children - who are living at or below the federal poverty line, which is extremely low income. Some neighborhoods with a lower average income may actually have a lower childhood poverty rate than another with a higher average income, and this helps us understand the conditions and character of a neighborhood.

The neighbors in the neighborhood in Lawai are upper-middle income, making it an above average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 60.6% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 2.2% of the children seventeen and under living in this neighborhood are living below the federal poverty line, which is a lower rate of childhood poverty than is found in 74.4% of America's neighborhoods.

What we choose to do for a living reflects who we are. Each neighborhood has a different mix of occupations represented, and together these tell you about the neighborhood and help you understand if this neighborhood may fit your lifestyle.

In the neighborhood, 38.4% of the working population is employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is executive, management, and professional occupations, with 34.3% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations (16.0%), and 10.5% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.

Languages

The languages spoken by people in this neighborhood are diverse. These are tabulated as the languages people preferentially speak when they are at home with their families. The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 88.0% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Italian, Japanese and Spanish.

Ethnicity / Ancestry

Culture is shared learned behavior. We learn it from our parents, their parents, our houses of worship, and much of our culture – our learned behavior – comes from our ancestors. That is why ancestry and ethnicity can be so interesting and important to understand: places with concentrations of people of one or more ancestries often express those shared learned behaviors and this gives each neighborhood its own culture. Even different neighborhoods in the same city can have drastically different cultures.

In the neighborhood in Lawai, HI, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Asian (22.4%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (9.5%), and residents who report Portuguese roots (7.8%), and some of the residents are also of Italian ancestry (7.7%), along with some German ancestry residents (7.1%), among others.

Getting to Work

How you get to work – car, bus, train or other means – and how much of your day it takes to do so is a large quality of life and financial issue. Especially with gasoline prices rising and expected to continue doing so, the length and means of one's commute can be a financial burden. Some neighborhoods are physically located so that many residents have to drive in their own car, others are set up so many walk to work, or can take a train, bus, or bike. The greatest number of commuters in neighborhood spend between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (43.5% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.

Here most residents (76.3%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also carpool with coworkers, friends, or neighbors to get to work (10.6%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.


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Economics & Demographics include:
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Commute To Work
Migration & Mobility
Race & Ethnic Diversity
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Crime includes:
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Schools include:
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