Oregon’s minimum wage jumps Monday, approaching $16 an hour in the Portland area. But how many workers make the minimum varies a lot by geography, and by industry.

State lawmakers overhauled Oregon’s minimum wage in 2016, mandating annual increases that are now pegged to inflation. And they set varying minimum wages for different parts of the state, to account for differences in the cost of living.

The new hourly minimum tops out at $15.95 in the Portland area, $14.70 in many counties in the Willamette Valley and Oregon coast, and $13.70 in the most rural parts of southern, central and eastern Oregon.

The Portland area’s minimum wage has climbed by nearly two-thirds since 2016, and the region now has one of the highest state-mandated minimum wages in the U.S. It trails only the District of Columbia ($17.50), Washington ($16.28), California and New York ($16 each).

But some cities have even higher minimum wages. Tukwila, Washington, appears to have the nation’s highest minimum wage at $20.29 for large employers.

Even as Oregon’s minimum wage has risen, the share of workers earning the minimum has fallen rapidly – from 7.4% in 2017 to 4.1% in each of the past two years, according to the Oregon Employment Department.

That may reflect the state’s extremely tight labor market, especially in the years since the pandemic. Most employers must pay above the minimum to fill jobs openings and hold onto workers.

There’s a lot of variation, though, among industries.

Oregon’s retail and hospitality sectors have the highest share of minimum wage workers – nearly 1 in 10 hospitality workers make the minimum wage.

Many of those hospitality jobs are in restaurants, bars or other venues where tips supplement paychecks. Oregon is among nine states that don’t have a lower minimum wage for workers who receive tips.

The lowest share of minimum-wage jobs is in manufacturing and construction, according to employment department data. Fewer than 2% of workers make the minimum in those sectors.

The share of minimum-wage workers varies considerably by region, too. In the sparsely populated rural counties of Sherman and Wheeler, a little more than 10% of all jobs pay the minimum wage.

The share of minimum-wage jobs in the Portland area ranges from 3.8% in Multnomah County to 5.9% in Clackamas County.

Deschutes County has the lowest share of minimum wage jobs among large Oregon counties at just 2.5%. The cost of living has risen sharply in the Bend area, where housing is more expensive than in much of the Portland area.

That wasn’t necessarily true eight years ago when Oregon lawmakers classified Deschutes County as having a lower cost of living than Portland and set its minimum wage $1.25 lower.

There is no provision in the state’s 2016 minimum wage law to reclassify a county with a rising cost of living so that workers in such places receive a higher minimum wage. Regardless, employers in the Bend area have already concluded they have to pay more than the minimum to attract workers.

-- Mike Rogoway covers Oregon technology and the state economy. Reach him at mrogoway@oregonian.com.

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