Federal Government Employment in the Rogue Valley
February 26, 2025
The other day I couldn’t help overhearing the 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 for our local trends in federal government jobs. During the third quarter of 2024, there were just more than 2,000 federal government jobs in Jackson County with an average annual wage of $95,496 and 330 in jobs in Josephine County with an average annual wage of $49,604. Federal jobs represented about 2.2% of total payroll jobs, and 3.6% of total wages on Jackson County in third quarter 2024. In Josephine County, federal government employment accounted 1.0% of payroll jobs and 2.0% of total wages during that most recent quarter. Statewide in Oregon, federal government accounted for about 1.5% of payroll jobs and 2.3% of 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 Jackson County were in nursing and residential care facilities, with over 800 jobs during third quarter 2024. Public administration accounted for about 400 of the county’s federal jobs, followed by transportation, warehousing and utilities with about 350 jobs. Forestry and logging, as well as administration of environmental programs both had over 200 jobs in Jackson County. In Josephine County postal service jobs were the most numerous, with about 110 jobs. Forestry and logging sector had the next largest share, with nearly 100 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 Rogue Valley, for 2023.
The graph below shows the trend in Rogue Valley federal government employment from 2001 to 2024, annual average. Since 2001, federal employment rose by 190 jobs, or 9.2%. Employment for the all-industry average rose by about 20% 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). Jackson County’s federal government location quotient was 1.1, just slightly more dependent of government jobs than the U.S. average. Josephine County had a federal government LQ of 0.5.
While the payroll employment numbers are less than 2.5% of the Rogue Valley’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 administration’s 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 Rogue Valley.