Federal Government Employment in the South Coast
February 25, 2025The other day I couldn’t help overhearing a conversation next to where I was standing. The topic was about being relocated back to the office space for work. With the timing of the conversation, I assumed they could be federal workers discussing recent executive order ramifications. They confirmed that by speculating how many federal workers there are in the region.
Let’s look at where we stand most recently in our local trends for federal government jobs. During the third quarter of 2024, there were about 300 federal jobs in Coos County with an average annual wage of $86,356 and about 110 in jobs in Curry County with an average annual wage of $94,564. Federal jobs represent about 1.4% of total payroll jobs and 2.4% of total wages in Coos County and 1.7% in Curry County’s payroll employment and 3.3% of total wages. Statewide in Oregon, federal government accounted for about 1.5% of payroll jobs and 2.3% of the state’s total payroll in third quarter 2024.
The charts below show the federal government employment in the third quarter 2024. Wages (annualized) are shown next to the employment size bars in the graph.
The largest share of federal jobs in Coos County were in administration of environment programs, with over 110 jobs during third quarter 2024. Postal service for about 100 of the county’s federal jobs, followed by ambulatory health care services with about 35 jobs. In Curry County forestry and logging jobs were the most numerous, with about 50 jobs. Postal service sector had the next largest share, with nearly 40 jobs.
Unlike individual employers, firms or business units, totals by each entity can be disclosed because those data are not considered proprietary, rather public information. The table below shows annual average employment for individual government entities in the South Coast, for 2023.
The graph below shows the trend in South Coast federal government employment from 2001 to 2024, annual average. Since 2001, federal employment declined by 120 jobs, or 22.6%. Employment for the South Coast all-industry average rose by about 5.8% over that time.
As a share of their economy’s, some smaller and rural counties are more dependent on federal government jobs, as a share of their employment base. A location quotient (LQ) is a measure of relative industry share in an economy. If an industry or sector has a LQ of 1, then its share of employment in the local matches the U.S. average share of employment. Counties in Oregon with higher LQs for federal government jobs as of June 2024 were Sherman (7.7), Grant (5.5), Harney (4.8), and Lake (4.2). Coos County’s federal government location quotient was 0.84, slightly less dependent of government jobs than the U.S. average. Curry County had a federal government LQ of 0.5.
While the payroll employment numbers are less than 2% of the South Coast’s payroll employment, the share of total wages is a bit more, with higher-than-average wages, on average, in federal government sectors. With the new administrations desires to reduce the size of the federal government, we can use this snapshot to see what local impacts will be seen in the size of the future federal government workforce in the South Coast.