Oregon’s labor market was essentially flat last year, adding just a handful of jobs across all industries. But one sector grew much faster — health care.
Overall, the health care field employs one in seven Oregon workers. The industry has grown twice as fast as the state’s overall labor market this century and accounted for nearly all of Oregon’s job growth in 2025.
The same phenomenon is playing out across the country as America’s aging population seeks medical assistance and support. But growth in the health care space is especially pronounced in Oregon.
That’s partly because the state’s population is older than the nation’s — the oldest in the West, in fact, and people tend to require more care as they age.
The growth in Oregon’s health care workforce also stands out because many other parts of the state’s labor market are performing poorly. Stalwart industries such as construction, manufacturing and retail all shed substantial numbers of jobs last year.
Oregon had 322,000 health care workers in the private sector at the end of 2025, according to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s 16% of all Oregon jobs. At the start of the century, health care jobs represented just 9% of the state’s total.
Seven of Oregon’s 15 fastest-growing jobs are in the health care field, according to the Oregon Employment Department. That includes nurse practitioners and medical health and services managers.
The employment department says the pace of job growth may slow in the coming years, but not because there will be less demand for health-care workers. It’s just the opposite: Oregon may not have enough qualified workers to keep up with the state’s needs.
A quarter of Oregon’s health care workers are older than 55, and the number of people earning certificates or degrees in health care fields isn’t rising fast enough to keep pace with job growth and looming retirements, the employment department found in a report last year. Providers, meanwhile, aren’t attracting enough workers from outside the state.
Federal data suggests Oregon could have a shortage of medical professionals in key fields within several years, the employment department reported.
The shortfall could be particularly great in some key fields. Government projections show that by 2033 Oregon may have just 88% of the nurses it needs. The gap would be even greater for general surgeons and mental health counselors, according to the forecasts, which predict Oregon will have less than two-thirds the professionals it needs in those fields.
This is Oregon Insight, The Oregonian’s weekly look at the numbers behind the state’s economy. View past installments here.
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