The 2017 unemployment insurance tax rate was published by the Hawaii Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, and Hawaii employers will be on contribution rate schedule C for the second year in a row.  The taxable wage base is $44,000 and the new employer rate is 2.4 percent.

 

The plan to follow schedule C comes after a year of overall declines in Hawaii's unemployment rate.  While the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was reported at 3.2 percent in January of 2016, it closed out the year at 2.9 percent in December.  The December rate was lower than the national seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for the same period, which was reported as 4.7 percent in December by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.