Occupational Wages in Northwest Oregon in 2024

October 2, 2024

Few aspects of an occupation are as important as its wages. Knowing how your pay compares with others in your field or in different careers is essential to making informed decisions about your own career options. Understanding wages is also important for business owners and hiring managers who set wages for workers. The Oregon Employment Department estimates and publishes wages for nearly 450 occupations across 22 different occupational groups in Benton, Clatsop, Columbia, Lincoln, and Tillamook counties. This data comes from survey responses from employers throughout the region.

Not all occupations in the region have published wages. This may be the case due to confidentiality reasons (only one or two firms employ an occupation), if only a few employees work in the occupation (too few in the sample), if the occupation is primarily self-employed (such as farmers), for some occupations if the wage is more than $239,200 per year, or if the wages reported in the sample for northwest Oregon are substantially different than those for other regions (an indication of poor data quality).

It may also be the case that wages for very specific occupations are not reported. For example, the wages for registered nurses are reported but the wage survey doesn’t distinguish between operating room nurses and cardiac care nurses.

The annual average wage for all occupations in Northwest Oregon was $61,150 in 2024, or $29.39 per hour. This was 11% less than the average wage for all occupations statewide of $68,780, or $33.06 per hour. Much of this difference in average wage is due to the large number of low-wage occupations in the region rather than being caused by lower pay for most occupations. Physicians, all other, had the highest average hourly wage among occupations employing over 100 individuals in the region at $110.29. Hosts and hostesses in restaurants, lounges, and coffee shops has the lowest average hourly wage of $15.21.

Wages for Selected Occupations

Below are the wages for the 16 most common occupations in Northwest Oregon. Many of these occupations pay below the average wage for the region, with general and operations managers and registered nurses paying above the annual average wage for the region. Many of these occupations are found in the leisure and hospitality, retail trade, and healthcare industries. Wages in northwest Oregon usually follow the same pattern as they do elsewhere. Wages are usually low for occupations requiring less education and fewer skills and higher for occupations demanding more preparation and investment in training and education.

Wages for other occupations can be found at qualityinfo.org by clicking on the Occupation & Wage Information link under the Tools tab and searching for the occupation of interest.

Wages for Broad Occupational Groups

Reviewing occupational wages is a useful step in planning a career. The table below presents the size and average wages for broad occupational groups rather than for specific occupations. Healthcare practitioners, management, engineering, and legal groups lead the wage list. Some of the top occupational groups have wages nearly twice the average for all occupations. Many of the specific occupations in these top groups require advanced education and training. Unfortunately, apart from health care practitioners and management, these occupational groups don’t provide plentiful jobs in Northwest Oregon’s economy. Legal and engineering occupational groups combined provide around 2,000 jobs.

Lower-wage occupational groups, including food preparation and serving, building and grounds cleaning and maintenance, personal care, and sales occupations, are filled with occupations that generally require less education. Some specific occupations in these lower-wage occupation groups do pay well. For example, some salespeople make very high wages. Sales representatives of technical and scientific products had average wages around $114,000 per year. Wholesale sales and construction are also two occupational categories where it is possible to make above-average wages without having formal post-secondary education or training.