Douglas County’s Per Capita Personal Income Increased in 2023

February 7, 2025

The U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis recently released its 2023 estimates of personal income for substate areas (counties and townships).

Personal income includes all forms of income including earnings by place of work, dividends, interest and rent, and government transfer payments (largely Social Security and Medicare). Total personal income is then divided by population to create per capita personal income (PCPI). 

PCPI is one of the most commonly used measures to gauge an area’s relative economic wellbeing, but there are limitations. For instance, since it includes the entire population, areas with a high concentration of children or students can skew the results lower since there is a large portion of the population with little or no income. Conversely, areas with an older population likely have a high proportion of retired people who may have a high level of wealth but lower relative incomes. Finally, it does not account for an area’s cost of living. People in areas with a low cost of living can live comfortably on less per capita income. That being said, let’s take a look at Douglas County’s PCPI.

Douglas County’s 2023 PCPI increased $2,549 (5.1%) to reach $52,684. In comparison, Oregon’s PCPI increased $3,731 (5.8%) to reach $67,838. For the U.S., PCPI increased $3,566 (5.4%) to reach $69,810. Prior to the gain in 2023 Douglas County’s PCPI increased $4,609 in 2021 and decreased -$613 in 2022.

Douglas County’s total personal income rose by approximately $294 million in 2023 to reach $5.9 billion, a 5.2% increase over 2022. The increase in 2023 follows a decrease of roughly -$62 million (-1.1%) in 2022.

The components of personal income for Douglas County show that 45% is from earnings; 18% is from dividends, interest, and rent; and 37% is from transfer payments mostly in the form of Social Security and Medicare. Douglas County has a high portion of personal income from transfer payments compared with the U.S. and Oregon, which are 18% and 21%, respectively – an indication of a relatively large retirement age population. 

Relative to other areas, Douglas County’s per capita personal income remained at 78% of the statewide figure and dropped to 75% of the U.S. figure. Douglas County’s 2023 per capita personal income ranks 31st among Oregon’s 36 counties.

More information is available at the Bureau of Economic Analysis website at www.bea.gov.