Oregonians know that Oregon is cooler than its neighbor to the south. Sandwiched between California to the south and Washington to the north, the state is home to hundreds of miles of gorgeous, rugged coastline and the Snake River, Crater Lake National Park and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
Oregon residents are lucky in that they don’t have to pay any sales tax in their state. They also don’t have to pump their own gas, which can be a bit surprising at first to state visitors. The state is home to more Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-certified buildings per capita than any other state and more craft breweries than any other state.
The median household income in Oregon for 2019 is right on par with the national median household income at $62,818 and $62,843, respectively, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The unemployment rate in December 2020 was 6.4%, which is .3 percentage points lower than the national unemployment rate of 6.7% but is 3.0 percentage points higher than December 2019, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
There currently are 986 registered Certified Financial Planners (CFPs) in Oregon, which represents 1.1% of the total number of CFPs in the U.S., according to the CFP Board. CFPs have fiduciary responsibility, which means they are required to act in the best interests of their clients rather than the best interest of the company they work for or themselves.
If you’re interested in working in finance or financial planning in Oregon, you’ll want to figure out whether you’re going to work as a fee-based advisor, charging your clients fees based on the amount of assets you’re managing, or a commission-based advisor, earning commissions on the sales of products and services.
The BLS provides salary data for financial advisors, stockbrokers and life insurance/annuity producers throughout the state in the regions of Bend-Redmond, Coast Oregon nonmetropolitan area, Corvallis, Eugene, Medford, Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro and Salem.
Financial Advisor Salary in Oregon
Financial advisor salaries in Oregon are well above the state’s median household income across the board, with advisors in Corvallis earning the lowest annual mean salary at $77,320 and advisors in Eugene earning the most at $146,000 per year. Portland, interestingly, comes in fourth place as far as salaries go despite it being the state’s largest metropolitan area.
The BLS only lists three salary data points for highly experienced advisors making in the 90th percentile of all advisors: $167,300 in Bend-Redmond, $157,260 in Salem and $102,190 in Corvallis.
Stockbroker Salary in Oregon
Stockbroker salaries in Oregon range from the low $40K range to the low $80K. The lowest-paying regions are Medford and Coast Oregon nonmetropolitan area with the highest salary being earned by brokers in Eugene at $81,020. For experienced brokers in the 75th percentile, the highest-paying regions are Salem at $113,430, followed by the Portland metro area at $77,230.
Life/Annuity Producer Salary in Oregon
The salaries for life insurance/annuity producers in Oregon mirror those of stockbrokers more than financial advisors with Eugene again being the highest-paying region at $84,100, followed closely by the Portland metro at $81,450. The lowest-paying region is the coastal nonmetropolitan area at $45,550. At the high end of the spectrum, salaries for Portland agents jump to $98,920 at the 75th percentile and $157,860 at the 90th percentile.
(Salary and job growth data reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in May 2019 for personal financial advisors; securities, commodities and financial services sales agents; and insurance sales agents. Figures represent national data, not school-specific information. Conditions in your area may vary. Information accessed February 2021.)