Smaller Employers Have Higher Shares of Minimum Wage Jobs

Smaller employers tend to employ a larger share of their workforce in minimum wage jobs. While private employers with fewer than 50 employees working in Oregon employ 38 percent of Oregon’s jobs, they are home to 45 percent of the state’s minimum wage jobs.

The largest private employers – those with 500 or more employees in Oregon – have the lowest share of minimum wage jobs, at 4 percent. These large employers account for 28 percent of Oregon’s total workforce, and because they are so large, even the small share of minimum wage jobs in this size class amounts to a lot of minimum wage jobs. Employers with more than 500 employees had 18,600 minimum wage workers in the first quarter of 2015, accounting for 19 percent of the state’s minimum wage employment.

For more information on Oregon's minimum wage, read "Oregon's Minimum Wage Jobs: Facts, Figures and Context".