Most Industries Had Real Wage Gains in Second Quarter 2024
March 20, 2025
Oregon had 2.01 million people working in jobs covered by the state’s unemployment insurance system during the second quarter of 2024. This was a decrease of 20,500, or -1.0%, from the same quarter of the previous year. They earned a total of $33.5 billion, with an average wage of about $16,700 per worker for the quarter. The median hourly wage during the quarter was $27.05.
Most industries had real wage gains, meaning that the median wage increased more than inflation. Other services had the largest real gain in median wage percentage growth from second quarter 2023 to second quarter 2024 (3.6%), followed by construction with 3.3% wage growth over the year.
Of the 24,300 jobs lost between second quarter 2023 and second quarter 2024, leisure and hospitality experienced the largest decrease in both numerical change (-10,600) and percentage change (-4.1%), followed by retail trade (-8,700, -3.9%). The largest increase in percentage change occurred in local government (+4.0%), followed by health care and social assistance (+2.8%).
Job losses between second quarter 2023 and second quarter 2024 occurred in two wage categories: jobs paying less than $15.00 per hour, and those paying $15.00 to $19.99. All other wage categories above $20.00 had job gains. This might be one of the reasons that contributed to real median wage gains, with 1.7% growth from second quarter 2023 to second quarter 2024.
About Oregonians @ Work Data
Oregon 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 on the data page at QualityInfo.org.
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.