Each month, Jake Procino, workforce analyst and economist from the Oregon Employment Department, releases the most recent economic indicators for the Portland region.
The “region” may not be what you think it is. Economists use the Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes Clackamas, Columbia, Multnomah, Washington and Yamhill counties in Oregon, and Clark and Skamania counties in Washington. That’s the area we’ll refer to below as the Portland MSA.
Here are some takeaways from Procino’s analysis of July’s numbers.
1. We’re losing jobs. Not a lot, but still…
Oregon’s total nonfarm payroll employment grew 0.6%, adding 11,200 jobs over the last 12 months ending in June. That’s good.
But Multnomah County’s nonfarm payroll employment contracted, down 0.4%, losing an estimated 1,900 jobs over the same time period.
And the Portland MSA saw employment levels shrink by 0.8% year-over-year ending in May.
To give that some perspective, Procino says it’s the largest employment loss among the top 50 biggest metro areas in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Las Vegas, Oklahoma City and San Antonio were the fastest growing among the largest metros.
2. How are the other Oregon counties doing?
It’s a mixed bag. A study of employment growth from June 2023 to June 2024 showed that Marion and Polk counties did all right, growing by 1.9%. Other counties saw weak job growth, like 0.7% for Lane and Jackson counties.
Washington County held flat at 0.0% growth, June to June, but that won’t hold true for long. We found out on Thursday, Aug. 1, that Intel plans impending cuts of 15%, reducing the company’s headcount by around 15,000 roles, according to reporter Nick LaMora of the Hillsboro NewsTimes. Washington County alone accounts for nearly a fifth of the global semiconductor company’s employees, LaMora tells us, including more than 22,000 workers across its Hillsboro and Aloha campuses.
Meanwhile, Deschutes County also saw 0.0% employment growth. Surprising, since we tend to think of Bend as a city growing by leaps and bounds.
And, obviously, some counties shucked jobs. Douglas County was down -0.2%, year over year. Multnomah, again, had -0.4%, and Clackamas County the biggest hit, at -1.0% employment growth.
3. Time out: Why do economists measure “nonfarm payroll employment?” What do you have against farmers?
For that one, I went to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, which offers a good explainer on this. Economists say that obtaining accurate farming employment numbers is complicated by self-employment, unpaid family employment, part-time or hobby farmers and other partnerships. Plus, agricultural labor data are affected by the unknown number of undocumented workers in the field.
For all those reasons, economists say adding farmwork skews the numbers.
4. Is it true that, on average, the higher a degree you obtain after high school, the more you make?
The answer is: yes. But it was difficult to get hard data on that until recently.
“Job and wage data for college graduates has traditionally been quite difficult to obtain,” Procino wrote in his monthly report.
Fortunately, it got a bit easier to crunch those numbers in 2022 when Oregon joined a cohort of states in the Post-Secondary Employment Outcomes experimental data product from the U.S. Census Bureau. The project matches up degree recipients with job data to provide a range of insights on where graduates end up and how much they earn over time.
So here’s what he found:
The median wage for someone with an associate’s degree from Portland Community College (full disclosure; I used to work for PCC) five years after graduation is $46,532.
A worker with a bachelor’s degree from Portland State University, five years past graduation, earns $51,041.
Not all degrees are created equal, as far as pay days go. “As with many colleges, instructional programs at PCC and PSU with the highest earnings postgrad include construction trades, health professions, engineering and computer and information,” Procino added.
He was able to tease that out a bit more: The median wage of a PSU grad with a bachelor’s degree is approximately $35,000 one year after graduation; $51K after five years; and $64K after 10 years.
Get a master’s from PSU? On average, you’re looking at $52K after one year; not quite $65K after five years; and north of $75K after 10 years.
And a doctoral degree, on average, earns you $76K per year after graduation; $90K after five years; and almost $99K after 10 years.
Of course, that doesn’t factor in student debt loads, and today, many college students graduate with backbreaking student loan debt.
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