Companies in Hawaii: the largest private employers, seven public companies and 32,911 businesses by island

This page is for anyone looking for companies in Hawaii: job seekers, businesses on the mainland looking for island partners or customers, researchers and B2B sellers deciding whether Hawaii is worth a territory. It covers who employs the most people, the public companies headquartered in the state, the Census count of businesses by island and industry, the state's business registries, and a worked example for selling to the hotels.

Hawaii's largest employers

The State of Hawaii's Annual Comprehensive Financial Report for the year ended June 30, 2025 lists the ten largest private sector employers, using Pacific Business News's October 2025 list. The report lists them alphabetically; here they're sorted by headcount:

Together they employ 35,598 people. The same report counts 50,366 state government employees in fiscal 2025, including 22,034 in lower education, because the state, not the counties, runs Hawaii's public schools. Health care leads the private list, and it's grown: Queen's had 5,320 employees on the 2016 list and Hawaii Pacific Health 6,617. Hawaiian Holdings, Outrigger Enterprises and Kyo-ya Hotels and Resorts were on the 2016 list and aren't on the 2025 one.

Public companies headquartered in Hawaii

Seven SEC-registered listed companies with operations give a Hawaii head office in their latest 10-K:

For the three banks, revenue is net interest income plus noninterest income, the measure banks report as total revenue, not gross interest income. Matson had 4,170 employees at the end of 2025, 161 of them outside the US. Bank of Hawaii had 1,877 full-time equivalent employees, 1,729 of them in Hawaii. First Hawaiian agreed in July 2026 to acquire TriCo Bancshares, the parent of California's Tri Counties Bank, according to its 8-K. Cyanotech's latest 10-K on EDGAR is for the year to March 2025.

Three companies that readers may expect aren't in the table. Alexander & Baldwin, the Honolulu commercial real estate company, filed its 2025 10-K but merged into Tropic Purchaser LLC in March 2026 and was delisted. Barnwell Industries' 10-K for the year to September 2025 gave a Honolulu address, but its October 2026 filings give 24 Greenway Plaza, Houston. And Pono Capital Four, a Honolulu blank-check company, has no operating business.

How many businesses are in Hawaii

The Census Bureau's County Business Patterns (CBP) counts locations with paid employees. For Hawaii in 2023:

In bands: 28,159 establishments have 1 to 19 employees, 4,061 have 20 to 99 and 691 have 100 or more. Average pay is our calculation from CBP payroll. CBP counts private locations, not companies, and leaves out self-employed people and government workers, so the 50,366 state employees above aren't in these figures.

What Hawaii businesses do

Tourism is the base: hotels and restaurants employ 18.8% of private workers. Hotels and motels alone (NAICS 721110) have 262 establishments and 34,423 employees, split almost evenly between Oahu (90 hotels, 13,799 employees) and Maui County (90 hotels, 10,972). Administrative and support services is unusually large for a state of this size, at 13.8% of private jobs, and nine of its establishments have 1,000 or more employees. Most of that is employment services (NAICS 5613), 48,144 employees, which includes staffing agencies and professional employer organizations that carry other companies' staff on their own payroll. Manufacturing is small: 723 establishments.

How to look up a Hawaii business

Business Check is the quickest first step, because it brings the entity record and the license record together. For construction work, the contractor licensing rules are covered in construction companies in Hawaii.

Prospecting Hawaii's hotels

Hotels are Hawaii's most concentrated buyers. The large resorts are run by management companies that buy some things centrally and others property by property, so the general manager, the director of engineering and the director of finance are usually the people who decide on facilities spending.

Illustrative example. The company, rates and results are fictional, to show the method.

Mauka Energy Services (maukaenergy.example) tunes chilled-water and hot-water systems for large buildings and wants Hawaii hotels with 100 or more employees.

• Hotels and motels with 100 to 249 employees: 36; 250 to 499: 19; 500 to 999: 17; 1,000 or more: 4. That's 76 properties.
• Several belong to the same owners and operators, so Mauka plans on about 50 separate buying decisions.
• Six projects a year at $120,000 each would be $720,000.

It leads with the director of engineering, brings the director of finance in once there's a savings estimate, and times outreach to annual capital plans. Working out who owns and who manages each of 76 properties, and who signs off on plant upgrades, is the research Bebop does for each account.

Subject: Chiller plant at [Hotel]

Hi [first name],

At resorts your size, the central plant is usually the largest energy load after the guest rooms, and most of the waste is in how it's sequenced rather than in the equipment.

We retune chilled and hot water systems for hotels on Oahu and Maui without a shutdown, and we measure the savings against your own utility bills. Could I send the before-and-after data from a recent 400-room property?

[Your name], Mauka Energy Services

Next step: see how big organizations split their buying in enterprise account research.