Hawaii families are getting squeezed from both sides — wages aren't keeping up and prices keep getting hit by one shock after another, and there's no quick fix in sight.

• Grocery spending by Hawaii residents jumped sharply at the start of 2025 and hasn't come back down.
• Repeated supply shocks — bird flu, tariffs, a fungus hitting cocoa crops, and oil prices from the Iran war — keep stacking on top of each other instead of fading.
• Hawaii's inflation is running above the national rate, and most people under 50 have never lived through a supply shock like this.
• Housing is the deepest problem: Oahu is short about 150,000 homes but builds only 3,000 a year, and no politician will campaign on closing that gap.
• Tourism, the state's main source of outside money, never got back to its pre-pandemic path, so jobs and businesses that depend on visitors are still behind.

Outlook: With housing supply stuck and new shocks arriving faster than old ones fade, affordability is set to stay the top issue heading into the election — and more residents are likely to leave.