Barista Rose Sherman makes coffee for customers at Caffe Umbria in downtown Portland in 2019. (Jaime Valdez)

The standard statewide hourly wage will rise to $15.05 per hour, while Portland’s minimum wage will rise to $16.30 per hour

 

Oregonians earning the minimum wage will soon receive 35 cents more per hour, the smallest annual increase in the past ten years.

The changes that go into effect Tuesday aren’t the same across the board for all of Oregon’s 36 counties. Workers in the Portland Metro will see the hourly minimum wage rise from $15.95 to $16.30 per hour. Nonurban counties — Baker, Coos, Crook, Curry, Douglas, Gilliam, Grant, Harney, Jefferson, Klamath, Lake, Malheur, Morrow, Sherman, Umatilla, Union, Wallowa, and Wheeler — will see their rate rise from $13.70 to $14.05 per hour. The standard statewide minimum wage rate for all other counties will rise from $14.70 to $15.05, a modest increase from the rate previously set last year on July 1, 2024.

About 6% of Oregonians earn the minimum wage, according to 2024 data from the Oregon Department of Employment.

The increases are tied to legislation passed in 2016, with Senate Bill 1532 mandating a series of yearly annual minimum wage increases from about 50 cents to 70 cents an hour each year. But in 2023, the law changed, instead tying increases to the average annual rate of inflation, calculated at the end of April by the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries.

This year’s 2.4% increase — the smallest increase since 2015 — is tied to the Consumer Price Index, which has steadily decreased in the past few months, according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. Last year’s increase was about 3.5%, and the year before that, hourly wages went up by about 5%.

Oregon is one of twenty states along with the District of Columbia that indexes its minimum wage increases to inflation, according to the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute.