A new analysis of Census data finds that Portland-area women earn 92 cents or less for every dollar a man earns.
The gap is widest for Latina workers in the Portland Metro area. On average, Latinas earned 61 cents per dollar earned by a man in 2023, the analysis from Portland research firm ECOnorthwest shows. The State of Women in the Portland Metro Economy report, commissioned by the Portland Metro Chamber, did not include an overall average for all women in the area but did show significant gender earnings gaps based on race.
Portland’s iconic landmarks, the White Stag sign and Old Town water tower, in downtown Portland, March 26, 2024.
Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB
The analysis found that on average, Black women make 67 cents per dollar, white women earn 88 cents per dollar, and Asian women make 92 cents per dollar earned by a man.
“The wage gap numbers in Oregon and nationally move at a glacial pace,” Emily Evans, the Director of the Center for Nonprofit and Philanthropic Insight at ECOnorthwest, told OPB. “They are so unbearably slow. We have barely made progress since the 90s. At the current rate, it will take nearly 100 years to close the gap.”
The analysis comes as Portland’s economy is nearing crisis level. Last month, ECOnorthwest economists released a separate report showing that expensive housing, job losses and slow population growth threaten to shrink the region’s economy.
Economists and policy makers use the wage gap to measure the economic health of women in the workforce. The gap has gotten smaller, but remains stubbornly in place. For individual workers and specific jobs, salaries can vary — but throughout most industries women are consistently paid less when they hold the same job as their male counterparts.
The problem is far from unique to Oregon. Overall, in the U.S., women make about 83 cents to every dollar a man makes, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Like in Portland, the gap significantly widens for Black and Latina women.
The gap in the Portland area has gotten smaller since 2017. Analysts found that in the five-year period Hispanic women went from making 55 cents to the dollar up to 61 cents compared with men. Black women made 60 cents to the dollar in 2017 and 67 cents five years later.
Those gaps are getting smaller because Oregon raised its minimum wage, Evans said.
“That is heartening not only because we saw improvement, but because it means that structural change, policy change, systemic change is actually enacting a meaningful difference in our communities in a relatively short period of time,” Evans told OPB.
“The takeaway is the status quo didn’t all of a sudden start working better.”
Report authors also found women are concentrated in careers that earn less than the average salary in Oregon. For example, women fill 67% of office and administrative support jobs in the Portland region. The typical salary is just under $50,000 per year. That’s $11,000 below the median for Oregon workers.
Analysts also looked at workforce participation rate, which has overall gone up for women in the Portland area. But parents in particular still have low workforce participation rates, especially for women with young children.
“In a regional economy grappling with slow job growth and rising costs, the structural underutilization of women’s labor and leadership capacity represents a constraint on the region’s productivity and resilience,” report authors concluded. “Whether that progress extends to all women, across race, household type, and occupation, will be a defining measure of the region’s economic resilience in the years ahead.”
