Where Women Work and How Much They Earn in Oregon
January 16, 2025More than 890,000 jobs in Oregon businesses or state and local governments were held by women in 2023. Women represent 48% of employment in Oregon, but the share of jobs held by women varies considerably by industry. Women’s average earnings were $4,988 per month in 2023, which was only 74% of the average earnings for men in all industries. Earnings for women, just like employment, vary by industry.
A note on the use of sex in this article: While gender is a spectrum, this article only uses the two binary sexes “female” and “male.” The data referenced in this article is from the Census’ Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI), which sources their sex data from the Social Security Administration. While sex identification on a Social Security document can be binary or non-binary, Social Security’s record system can only designate a person as either female or male.
Women’s Employment by Industry
Women outnumbered men in eight of Oregon’s 20 major industry sectors. Women held the highest percentage of jobs in health care and social assistance, holding nearly three out of every four jobs. Other industries with a high percentage of female employment include educational services (66%) and finance and insurance (62%). In contrast, women held the lowest percentage of jobs in the industries of mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction (16%) and construction (21%).
The health care and educational services industries not only have the greatest share of jobs held by women, but also top the list for greatest number of women employed in all of Oregon’s industries. More than 221,000 of the jobs in health care and social assistance were held by women. Educational services has the second largest level with nearly 98,000 women employed. While retail trade employs more men than women, the industry employs the third largest number of women with also nearly 98,000 jobs.
Total average annual employment increased (1.6%) from 2022 to 2023. During that period, the rate of employment change for women (2.9%) was larger than that for men (0.1%). Women’s employment growth was the highest in arts, entertainment, and recreation (12.9%), health care and social assistance (5.1%), and management of companies and enterprises (4.6%). Employment among women decreased the most in transportation and warehousing (-8.2%), administrative and support and waste management (-2,3%), and retail trade (-0.6%).
Employment trends by industry for women tended to follow larger industry trends, with a few key exceptions. Women’s employment in construction increased 3.6%, though the industry as a whole only grew 0.9%. Women’s employment in transportation and warehousing decreased by more (-8.2%) than the industry as a whole (-5.4%).
Women’s Average Earnings by Industry
Monthly earnings for women in 2023 averaged $4,988. The industries where women earned the highest average monthly income were management of companies and enterprises ($9,396), utilities ($8,474), and information ($8,290). These industries have a higher average wage overall, regardless of sex. Industries where women earned the least in terms of average income were accommodation and food services ($2,482); arts, entertainment, and recreation ($2,625); and retail trade ($3,200). Similarly, these industries tend to have a lower average wage overall.
In every industry, average monthly earnings for women were lower than men’s earnings. Women’s earnings as a percentage of men’s ranged from a relatively close 88% in accommodation and food services, to 65% in finance and insurance. There are many factors behind these disparities in earnings, such as the number of hours worked, the relative wages of occupations with higher concentrations of women within these industries, and the propensity for women to hold or be promoted into management positions with higher rates of pay.
The above data provide industry detail about the earnings of women and men in Oregon not available from other sources, but they do not explain why women have smaller paychecks than men on an aggregate level. On average, women in Oregon earn 74% of what men earn (not accounting for hours worked or type of job). This is up only seven percentage points from 2013, when women earned 67% of what men earned, on average. While this is an improvement, the wage gap endures. There are a multitude of reasons for this, two of which are explored below: hours worked and lack of representation in upper management.
Difference in hours worked partially explains the wage gap. According to an article published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women in the U.S. who were full-time wage and salary workers had median weekly earnings that were 83% of the median earnings for men who were full-time wage and salary workers in 2021 — notably more than the 72% for all workers in Oregon. One big reason for the discrepancy in hours worked is childcare. According to a 2023 study by Pew Research, women with a child at home tend to be less active in the workplace or work fewer hours than women without a child at home. Men, however, tend to be more active in the workplace and work more hours with a child at home. Additionally, Pew notes, “Women who experience breaks in their careers after becoming mothers sacrifice at least some of their earnings.”
A lack of equal representation of the sexes in upper management positions (significantly higher paying jobs) also partly explains why average earnings of women are less than the average earnings of their male counterparts. A 2022 analysis from McKinsey & Company, a management consulting firm, examines how COVID-19 has affected women in the workplace at the national level. They found that fewer and fewer women are employed in management positions as you move up the corporate ladder. At the start of 2022, 48% of entry-level managers surveyed were women, while only 26% of “C-suite” managers (e.g. CEO, CTO, CFO, etc.) were women.
There are many other economic factors that contribute to the enduring wage gap not covered here. Pew (in their study referenced above) looked at other factors such as discrimination, differences in education, and the “fatherhood wage premium.”
Employment and Earnings for Transgender and Non-Binary Workers
The Williams Institute at UCLA estimated there are about 1.6 million transgender adults in the U.S. in 2022 (transgender is defined here as people whose gender differs from their sex assigned at birth). Currently, neither the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) nor the U.S. Census Bureau collects gender identity for employment measurement purposes. As mentioned above, the QWI data used in this article uses sex data from the Social Security Administration. The BLS and Census have assessed the feasibility of asking about gender identity in the Current Population Survey (CPS; the survey the U.S. uses to measure unemployment), but there are currently no plans to ask about gender identity in the CPS.
While there are no official government measures of employment and earnings for transgender and non-binary workers, there are several other private organizations that do research on the topic. Though it should be noted that this type of research is from relatively small sample sizes compared to the Census’ Quarterly Workforce Indicators.
In 2015, the National Center for Transgender Equality estimated from a sample that the unemployment rate for transgender residents in Oregon was 12%. This is more than double the unemployment rate of 5.5% for all residents in Oregon in 2015.
In a 2024 National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper “Transgender earnings gaps in the United States: Evidence from administrative data,” Christopher S. Carpenter, Lucas Goodman, and Maxine J. Lee used U.S. administrative data for 55,000 individuals who changed their gender marker with the Social Security Administration to estimate the transgender earnings gap. They estimated a transgender earnings penalty of about 6-13% in the U.S.
Employment and Earnings by Sex Data
Information about employment and earnings by industry and sex is from the U.S. Census’s Local Employment Household Dynamics (LEHD) partnership with the states. LEHD provides the most comprehensive data available for employment and earnings of women and men at the state and county level. Employment data is the average of quarterly employment for 2023. Earnings are the average of quarterly earnings in 2023 of workers who worked at least one full quarter during the year.
To explore and use the data available from LEHD, visit lehd.ces.census.gov.