Wage and Job Growth Across Many Industries

March 7, 2024

Oregon had 1.98 million people working in jobs covered by the state’s unemployment insurance system during the first quarter of 2023. This was an increase of 21,700, or 1.1%, from the same quarter of the previous year. They earned a total of $33.4 billion, with an average wage of about $16,800 per worker for the quarter. The median hourly wage during the quarter was $26.17.

Wage Growth in Several Industries Despite Inflation

Oregon employers reported almost 2.1 million jobs during the first quarter of 2023. The vast majority of Oregonians (90.1%) held one job during the quarter. Approximately 8.8% of workers in the first quarter of 2023 held two jobs, 1.0% of workers held three jobs, and 0.2% of workers held four or more jobs. This looks similar to a year ago in the first quarter of 2022.

Meanwhile, the median wage decreased by $0.28 over the year, after being adjusted for inflation according to the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U). Strong inflation over the past few years has translated to fewer industry wages keeping up in their real purchasing power.

Seven industries had real wage gains, meaning that the median wage increased more than inflation: professional and business services, other services, construction, leisure and hospitality, manufacturing, information, and wholesale trade. Professional and business services had the largest real gain in median wage percentage growth from first quarter 2022 to first quarter 2023 (2.0%). However, a handful of industries had decreases in real median wage. Transportation, warehousing, and utilities jobs had the biggest decrease in both real percentage change (-3.0%) as well as the real dollar value decrease (-$0.84).

Median Wages and Share of Jobs

It comes as no surprise that firms with at least 500 employees have the greatest number of jobs. Jobs in firms with 500 or more employees make up 33% of all jobs. Firms with 20-49 employees and firms with 100-249 employees rank second in size, making up 13% of all jobs each.

Generally speaking, larger employers tend to pay higher wages. Firms with 500 or more employees had a median wage of $30.07 – more than $3 higher than the next highest median wage ($26.41). As firm size class increased, median wage decreased, up to firms with five to nine employees, after which it began increasing, albeit slowly. The median wages for firms with five to nine employees ($23.71) and 10-19 employees ($23.74) were almost identical. Firms with less than five employees had a median wage ($25.21) very similar to firms with 50-99 employees ($25.03). Overall, firms with at least 20 employees but less than 500 employees paid a median wage between about $24 and $27. The substantial jump in median wage occurred between firms with 250-499 employees and firms with 500 or more employees.

When looking at real median wage growth (which accounts for inflation) by firm employment size class, all firm sizes with less than 100 employees had positive wage growth. Firms with 500 or more employees had the largest decrease (-2.7%) in real wage change from the first quarter of 2022 to first quarter 2023. Firms with five to nine employees had the largest real median wage gain with a 2.2% increase from the first quarter of 2022 to the first quarter of 2023.

Most Industries are Adding Jobs

Of the 17,200 jobs gained between first quarter 2022 and first quarter 2023, health care and social assistance experienced the largest growth (+20,000 jobs; +6.8%). The largest decrease in both numerical change and percentage change occurred in retail trade (-18,800 jobs; -7.6%).

Instead of looking at the raw numerical change, it can sometimes be more helpful to look at the percentage change in jobs. Some industries are larger than others by nature, and large increases or decreases, though they account for many jobs, are a small percentage when compared with the size of the industry. For example, local government gained about 4,200 jobs between first quarter 2022 and first quarter 2023. This constituted a 2% increase. For comparison’s sake, construction also increased by about 2%, which was a gain of about 2,900 jobs.

Looking at the industries that gained jobs between first quarter 2022 and first quarter 2023, two industries made up the majority of those gains. Health care and social assistance, and leisure and hospitality made up 68% of the job growth. Each of those industries had gains over 10,000, while the rest were under 5,000 each.

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.