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.
Lawai is neither predominantly blue-collar nor white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, Lawai is a town of professionals, service providers, and managers. There are especially a lot of people living in Lawai who work in food service (11.00%), management occupations (8.38%), and business and financial occupations (7.86%).
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 21.35% 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.
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.
The education level of Lawai citizens is very high relative to the national average among all cities (21.84%): 35.50% of adults in Lawai have a bachelor's degree or even advanced degree.
The per capita income in Lawai in 2022 was $37,611, which is middle income relative to Hawaii, and upper middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $150,444 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 25.84% of the town’s residents. Important ancestries of people in Lawai include Italian, Portuguese, English, Irish, and German.
The most common language spoken in Lawai is English. Other important languages spoken here include Pacific Island languages and Spanish.
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.
is a neighborhood that is on the ocean, a bay, or inlet. Many times, such places have amenities that bring locals and visitors to the waterfront for recreational activities or to check out the scenery. In some densely populated areas that are less financially well-off, the neighborhood waterfront can be relatively industrial and less open to recreation. 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.
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Portuguese and Lithuanian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 5.8% of this neighborhood's residents have Portuguese ancestry and 1.9% have Lithuanian ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 2.8% 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 99.3% of the neighborhoods in America.
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 61.8% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 2.4% 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 73.2% of America's neighborhoods.
The old saying "you are what you eat" is true. But it is also true that you are what you do for a living. The types of occupations your neighbors have shape their character, and together as a group, their collective occupations shape the culture of a place.
In the neighborhood, 36.1% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants, with 31.9% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations (20.3%), and 10.4% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
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 82.0% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Italian, Japanese and German/Yiddish.
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 (24.1%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (11.7%), and residents who report English roots (6.8%), and some of the residents are also of German ancestry (6.2%), along with some Portuguese ancestry residents (5.8%), among others. In addition, 12.3% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.
Even if your neighborhood is walkable, you may still have to drive to your place of work. Some neighborhoods are located where many can get to work in just a few minutes, while others are located such that most residents have a long and arduous commute. The greatest number of commuters in neighborhood spend between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (44.1% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (71.2%) 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 (14.8%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.