About Oregon's Industry Clusters | Oregon Business Plan (2023)

FAQs

What types of businesses or industries flourish in Oregon? ›

Oregon Business & Industry (OBI) is Oregon's leading statewide business association representing more than 1,600 businesses and industries in the state. With a member-driven focus, we advance and protect business interests in Oregon's state capitol, state and federal agencies, Congress, and the courts.

Overview of the Oregon Economy

The top three sectors by total employment are Manufacturing, Real Estate and Rental and Leasing, Healthcare and Social Assistance, while the unemployment rate across the state in 2022 was 3.8%.

An industry cluster is a group of firms and related stakeholders that gain productive advantages from operating in close proximity -- such as deeper labor pools, better access to customers and suppliers, knowledge spillovers, and other economies of scale.

Oregon's traditional natural resource base is the platform for industry clusters in forestry and wood products, agriculture, nursery products, and food processing. Oregon's tourism and hospitality industry is also bolstered by our great scenic endowment, outdoor recreation and culinary landscape.

Agriculture, forestry, and fishing

Oregon is among the leading states in the country in the production of hazelnuts, peppermint, raspberries, blackberries, and loganberries.

Manufacturing. Portland is a national leader in specialized areas of manufacturing. Products include high tech electronics and specialty metal fabrication.

Software & IT is one of the fastest growing industry groups in Oregon, with 59 percent employment growth over the past 10 years. More than 5,300 Software & IT businesses call Oregon home.

In 2021, the finance, insurance, real estate, rental, and leasing industry added the most real value to the gross domestic product (GDP) of Oregon, amounting to around 40.22 billion U.S. dollars. In the same year, the construction industry contributed around 8.77 billion U.S. dollars worth of value to the state's GDP.

How does Oregon make money? ›

General Fund dollars come almost entirely from income taxes paid by individual Oregonians and Oregon businesses. The General Fund is also the most discretionary source of funds that the Governor and Legislature may spend. Other Funds are the largest single category of revenues the state receives for the state budget.

Some well-known examples include New York's Financial Services cluster or Silicon Valley's IT cluster. Memphis has a strong Transportation, Distribution and Logistics industry cluster because of the city's central location, infrastructure and high concentration of companies to support the industry.

Opportunities through collaboration. Through a multi-stakeholder collaboration, industrial clusters provide an opportunity to not only reduce emissions, but also deliver other benefits such as job creation, productivity gains, green credentials and acceleration of technology deployment.

Oregon's top agricultural products include: milk, nursery stock, hops, cattle and calves, berries, pears, potatoes, eggs, onions, peppermint, wine grapes, cherries, hay and sweet corn. There are more than 38,500 farms in Oregon, a number that is down about four percent from the previous census five years ago.

Beef cattle, hay, potatoes, and mint grow in this scenic area of the state. But the most intensive production is found in the Treasure Valley along the Idaho border where much of the nation's onion production takes place. Other irrigated crops include sugar beets and a variety of vegetables.

While computer and electronic products currently top Oregon exports at $5.6 billion, agriculture is nothing to sneeze at with nearly $2 billion in exports. Add in processed food, and total ag-related exports easily surpasses $2 billion in international exports that benefit the Oregon economy.

Oregon is famous for its amazing natural wonders like Crater Lake, Mount Hood, and Cannon Beach. It's also the home of Nike, Portland, and thousands of llamas.

What products is Oregon known for? ›

When it comes to food, Oregon is known for blueberries, huckleberries, marionberries, Dungeness crab, and hazelnuts (Oregon produces 99% of the nation's hazelnut crops). Voodoo donuts, Salt & Straw ice cream, Tillamook cheese, are also all popular foods with origins in Oregon!

Trade In August 2022, the top exports of Portland, OR were Potassic Fertilizers ($196M), Cars ($92.1M), Carbonates ($80.3M), Delivery Trucks ($27.7M), and Wheat ($23.4M).

The slogan, "The City that Works," is accompanied by the city/county information and referral line number, 503-823-4000, and the name of the bureau that operates the vehicle.

With 24,304 manufacturers employing 1,541,000 manufacturing workers, California is the nation's largest manufacturing state. A hotbed for innovation, electronics is California's largest industrial sector, home to top companies such as Tesla, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and General Atomics.

Whether you have an established small business or are just entering the startup scene, Oregon offers something for everyone. With its favorable business climate and tax incentives – not to mention lower operating costs than traditional startup hubs – you may see your business grow at a faster rate in the Beaver State.

Is the economy good in Oregon? ›

Oregon's economy entered the 2019–2021 biennium with job growth that was faster than the nation, and unemployment rates that were at historic lows.

When we refer to natural resources in Oregon, we generally mean arable farm land, forests and grasslands, fisheries, and water in all its forms (freshwater rivers and wetlands, and marine resources and estuaries). These natural resources are intimately tied with rural life.

Oregon leads the states in lumber production. Food processing is the third-ranking manufacturing activity in the state. The most important products in this sector are frozen fruits and vegetables. Other processed foods include baked goods, beverages and canned goods.

As of Oct 22, the average annual salary in Oregon is $61,855. Just in case you need a simple salary calculator, that works out to be approximately $29.74 an hour. This is equivalent of $1,189 a week or $5,154 a month. Most salaries in Oregon range between $43,553 (25th percentile) to $78,888 (75th percentile) annually.

On July 1, 2022, Oregon hourly minimum wage becomes $13.50 in Jackson and Josephine Counties and other "standard" counties. It is $12.75 today. The minimum wage in nonurban counties rises from $12.00 per hour to $12.50. The Portland metro area minimum wage increases 75 cents to $14.75 per hour tomorrow.

$23,363 is the 25th percentile. Salaries below this are outliers. $76,551 is the 75th percentile.

Industry, a group of productive enterprises or organizations that produce or supply goods, services, or sources of income. In economics, industries are customarily classified as primary, secondary, and tertiary; secondary industries are further classified as heavy and light.

What makes a successful cluster? ›

Among these factors are a clear core competency, access to funding, strong leadership with the capability to run companies, highly qualified researchers for new ideas, skilled workers, and demand for the cluster products or services.

At a high level, a computer cluster is a group of two or more computers, or nodes, that run in parallel to achieve a common goal. This allows workloads consisting of a high number of individual, parallelizable tasks to be distributed among the nodes in the cluster.

The goal of clustering is to find distinct groups or “clusters” within a data set. Using a machine language algorithm, the tool creates groups where items in a similar group will, in general, have similar characteristics to each other.

In a computer system, a cluster is a group of servers and other resources that act like a single system and enable high availability, load balancing and parallel processing. These systems can range from a two-node system of two personal computers (PCs) to a supercomputer that has a cluster architecture.

Clusters arise because they raise a company's productivity, which is influenced by local assets and the presence of like firms, institutions, and infrastructure that surround it.

The main advantage of a clustered solution is automatic recovery from failure, that is, recovery without user intervention. Disadvantages of clustering are complexity and inability to recover from database corruption.

Oregon's top agricultural products include: milk, nursery stock, hops, cattle and calves, berries, pears, potatoes, eggs, onions, peppermint, wine grapes, cherries, hay and sweet corn. There are more than 38,500 farms in Oregon, a number that is down about four percent from the previous census five years ago.

The fastest-growing sector has been leisure and hospitality, which rebounded over the last year with more than 29,000 jobs. While Oregon's unemployment rate now matches the national average, the pace of job recovery is slightly behind the country as a whole, according to the state's analysis.

When it comes to food, Oregon is known for blueberries, huckleberries, marionberries, Dungeness crab, and hazelnuts (Oregon produces 99% of the nation's hazelnut crops). Voodoo donuts, Salt & Straw ice cream, Tillamook cheese, are also all popular foods with origins in Oregon!

The state ranked first in scores for worker protections and the right for workers to organize and sixth for wage policies, giving it the overall top score in the in the new study. Oregon came in first last year as well, but improved its score for wage policies, moving up from ninth place.

What jobs are good in Oregon? ›