Fourth Quarter 2024: Median Wage and Employment by Firm Size and Industry
August 04, 2025Oregon employers must report total wages and hours worked for each employee covered by unemployment insurance. These quarterly records cover more than two million individuals employed in the state but don’t include roughly 230,000 self-employed workers. Past quarterly wage reports are available in the Oregonians @ Work drop-down menu at www.qualityinfo.org/data.
Oregon had 2.01 million workers covered by the state’s unemployment insurance system during the fourth quarter of 2024. The workforce remained virtually unchanged from the same quarter of the previous year. They earned a total of $35.9 billion, with an average wage of about $17,826 per worker for the quarter. The median hourly wage during the quarter was $28.35.
Most Industries Had Wage Gains
Oregon employers reported almost 2.2 million jobs during the fourth quarter of 2024. (Individuals with multiple jobs are counted for each job they hold.) Most Oregonians (89.7%) held one job during the quarter. Approximately 9.0% of workers in the fourth quarter of 2024 held two jobs, 1.1% of workers held three jobs, and 0.2% of workers held four or more jobs. This looks similar to a year ago in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Meanwhile, the median wage increased by $0.37 over the year, after being adjusted for inflation according to the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U). Inflation continued to ease through 2024 after a significant moderation in 2023, and 11 industries experienced real wage growth, meaning that the median wage increased more than inflation.
Construction had the largest real gain in median wage from fourth quarter 2023 to fourth quarter 2024 ($1.20; 3.3%). While most industries kept pace with inflation, health care and social assistance, professional and business services, and information recorded declines in real median wages compared with the same quarter a year ago. Information had the biggest decrease in both real percentage change (-1.5%) as well as the real dollar value decrease (-$0.76).
Private Jobs Concentrated in Firms with Fewer than 500 Workers
The Bureau of Labor Statistics defines an establishment as an economic unit that produces goods or services, usually at a single physical location, and is engaged in one or predominantly one activity. A firm is a legal entity possessing the right to conduct business on its own, either corporate or otherwise, and may consist of one establishment, a few establishments, or even a very large number of establishments. During the fourth quarter of 2024, Oregon’s unemployment insurance system covered about 119,000 firms. The vast majority of firms (97.9%) had a single establishment. These businesses comprised 56.2% of employment for the quarter.
The Small Business Administration (SBA) defines a small business as an independent one with fewer than 500 employees. Some data sources use the total number of employees in a firm to classify business size class, other datasets use the number of employees in individual establishment, while others use a monetary classification such as firm revenue. Oregonians @ Work size class data use firm as the unit of analysis.
The public sector, including state government and local government, accounted for 12.7% of all jobs during the fourth quarter of 2024. Most workers in the public sector were employed by large agencies. State government had the greatest share of employment (83.0%) in firms with 500 or more employees, followed by local government (73.6%) for the quarter. Firms with fewer than 500 employees represented the greatest share of jobs (70.6%) for the private sector. Almost half (47.2%) of private employment fell in firms with one to 99 employees, and 23.4% fell in firms with 100 to 499 employees.
The share of employment by firm size class varies across industries within the private sector. Firms with fewer than 500 employees contributed the majority of employment in most priviate-sector industries, except for retail trade during the fourth quarter of 2024. Nine industries had at least 50% of jobs in firms with fewer than 100 employees. Other services had the highest share (78.5%), followed by construction (73.8%).
Large businesses made up a significant portion of employment in retail trade (50.5%); transportation, warehousing, and utilities (47.1%); and health care and social assistance (43.4%). For businesses with 100 to 499 employees, the share of jobs ranged from 16.8% in retail trade and other services to 32.8% for manufacturing in fourth quarter 2024. None of the industries had the greatest share of employment in firms with 100 to 499 employees.
Not All Industries Saw Higher Median Wages in Larger Firms
The distribution of total wages across firm size classes closely mirrors the distribution of employment in many industries. However, notable differences emerged in some sectors. Industries such as manufacturing, health care and social assistance, construction and other services showed a larger share of total wages concentrated in firms with 500 or more employees, reflecting a higher pay in larger firms. In contrast, wholesale trade and natrual resources and mining had more of their total wages paid by firms with fewer than 100 employees.
Median wages increased in a nearly linear pattern across the eight firm size classes in construction during the fourth quarter of 2024. Health care and social assistance also showed an upward trend in median wages by firm size, though median wages fluctuated between size groups rather than rising steadily. Manufacturing and other services saw relatively modest median wage increases across most firm size classes before a sharp jump for firms with 500 or more employees.
Wholesale trade and natural resources and mining showed different patterns in median wages by firm size. Generally speaking, median wages declined as firm size increased in wholesale trade for the quarter. The biggest drop occurred between firms with fewer than five employees and those with five to nine employees. Median wages then continued to decrease gradually before a slight uptick at the 250 to 499 employees class, and remained flat for firms with 500 or more employees. Natrual resources and mining had a relatively steady median wage pattern across most firm size classes before experiencing a steep decline in the largest firm size group.
Note that non-classifiable jobs were excluded from much of this analysis. The individuals under non-classifiable work for employers who have not yet been assigned an industry code, so it really isn’t a “sector.” Those employees will start to show up under other industries in future quarters as we are able to determine the correct code. The wage change over time for this group is meaningless, because the employers – and their employees – included here change each quarter.
To provide better data, this analysis also filters out job records that probably contain errors. Jobs that report zero hours or more than 999 hours (about 77 hours per week) worked in a quarter and jobs that paid less than the federal minimum wage ($7.25 per hour) are excluded. Jobs that paid more than $500 per hour and reported less than 10 hours work during the quarter are also excluded.