Recent Detailed Industry Employment and Wages in Jackson County
September 22, 2026There are two main sources for industry employment data at the county level. Monthly estimates are published under the Current Employment Statistics (CES) program. The Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages program (QCEW) publishes quarterly data resulting from employer’s tax records. The QCEW data are best considered a point-in-time snapshot of employment by industry sector. Changes in unemployment insurance coverage requirements, what industry code a particular business is assigned, or even what county or location the employment for a business is counted may change. These are some of the reasons the CES data are best for analyzing trends in industry employment for a specific geography over time.
Both of these data sets are readily searchable and are located under the “tools” tab at QualityInfo.org. The QCEW data are at: Employment & Wages by Industry (QCEW), with the most detailed data by county available at the 3-digit level of detail quarterly. The more current estimates of industry employment at the county level can be found at: Current Employment Estimates (CES) and are usually published to the broad sector level of detail.
In the movie Shek, Shrek explains to Donkey that ogres are like onions. “They have layers,” he exclaims. The same might be said about employment by industry statistics. If you want even more granular industry employment and wage statistics at the county level, you can peel back more layers of that information onion to find more precise levels of detail. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes data for many industries down to the 4-, 5-, and 6-digit level of industry detail. These data can be found at Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.
In this article we’ll highlight a few data points in this exhaustive information series. Starting at the onion skin, where we get the entire covered employment picture: In March 2026 Jackson County had 79,175 private-sector jobs with an average weekly wage of $1,178. This series is titled “high level” on the BLS data viewer tool and captures all covered employment (payroll) jobs for that quarter, including some industry break-outs. The largest industries by employment were education and health services (21,856); trade, transportation and utilities (18,756); and leisure and hospitality (10,413).
Location quotients are also provided, showing the relative concentration of employment in an industry for a particular area compared with the U.S. An industry with a location quotient of 1.0 for a local area would have the same share of jobs in that sector as the overall U.S. economy. A location quotient of 2.0 would mean that there is double the percent of employment in that industry in a local area, compared with the share of employment in that industry in the U.S. Industries with the highest location quotients were natural resources and mining (2.92), education and health services (1.4), and trade, transportation, and utilities (1.14). Information, financial activities, professional and business services, and manufacturing industries had relatively less employment concentration in Jackson County than the U.S.
The highest average weekly wages were in information ($2,376), professional and business services ($1,859), financial activities ($1,683), and education and health services ($1,332), all paying above the all-private industry average in Jackson County. The goods-producing industries of construction ($1,321) and manufacturing ($1,262) paid just above the all-industry private-sector average, and natural resource and mining paid slightly less ($899) than the average weekly wage.
As we peel back another layer of the industry employment onion in Jackson County, at the 2-digit level of detail, total payroll employment is published, with no sectors suppressed due to confidentiality. Health care and social assistance had the most jobs in March 2026, at 20,842. The next two largest sectors in March 2026 were retail trade (12,345) and accommodation and food services (8,767). As this is quarterly data, the total for accommodation and food services would be higher if we were looking at the third quarter, or summer employment. Even so, during first quarter 2026 Jackson County accommodation and food services had about 1.08 times the share of employment as the U.S. Retail trade had a higher share of jobs locally with a location quotient of 1.4. Both industries pay relatively lower average weekly wages of $513 and $827, respectively. Having a larger share employment in lower-paying industries is one factor in Jackson County’s lower all-industry average wage compared with Oregon or the U.S.
Slicing deeper into this data, we have the 3-digit NAICS industry level – like the detail available on QualityInfo.org. Further details require some suppressions, resulting in about 89% of total payroll employment by industry published for Jackson County. At this level of detail, accommodation and food service employment is split out by food services and drinking places (7,651 jobs in March 2026) and accommodations (1,068 jobs). In other industries details are lost. For example, the health care and social assistance sector shows about 7,261 jobs in ambulatory health care services and 5,284 jobs in social assistance, but no additional health services jobs such as in hospitals are published. Support activities for agriculture and forestry (1,601 jobs) and forestry and logging (191 jobs) show a small share of total employment, but large location quotients of 8.28 and 7.62, respectively – which makes sense considering most of the U.S. has a small share or no jobs in these sectors. These data include only jobs covered by unemployment insurance, so don’t represent all jobs, as many self-employed and other jobs not covered by unemployment insurance are excluded from these figures.
Carving into what the BLS publishes that is not available on QualityInfo.org, detail at the 4-, 5- and 6-digit level reveals more specifics about some sectors and obscures a greater share of total jobs. At the 4-digit level, about 85% of total payroll jobs are published for Jackson County. Here we find some interesting differences between wages within the retail trade sector. Overall, retail trade had an average weekly wage of $827. However, some sectors within retail trade paid better such as automotive dealers ($1,400), other motor vehicle dealers ($1,051), and electronic and appliance retailers ($928). For the manufacturing sector, we find that both sawmills and wood preservation ($1,583) and veneer, plywood, and other engineered wood product manufacturing ($1,376) had higher weekly wages than semiconductor and other electronic component manufacturing ($1,060) in Jackson County. Oregon statewide had similar weekly wage in those two wood products industries, but Oregon’s average weekly wage for semiconductor and other electronic component manufacturing was $4,472 – more than four times Jackson County’s weekly wage.
In the professional and technical sector, lower concentrations were found in architectural, engineering, and related services (0.29); computer systems design and related services (0.29); management, scientific, and technical consulting services (0.51); legal services (0.47); and accounting, tax preparation, bookkeeping, payroll services (0.76).
At the 5-digit industry level, slightly less than 80% of total employment is published by industry in Jackson County. Here we can find employment and payroll data for Jackson County veterinary services separated from “all other professional and scientific services”. This shows there were 40 veterinary services firms with about 440 jobs that had an average weekly wage of $1,094 in first quarter 2026 in Jackson County.
Finally, at the 6-digit level of detail, we find information about 70% of payroll jobs. Within this level we see that limited services restaurants had 2,709 jobs during March 2026 and full-service restaurants had more jobs at 3,183. Average weekly wages were $555 in full-service establishments compared with $463 for limited-service restaurants.
There are many layers to this employment by industry data, much like an onion or an ogre. I hope this summary of the information available encourages you to explore the county-level data in your industry or sector of interest.
