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Clark County’s job boom draws more Oregon workers across the Columbia
More than 20,000 Oregon residents worked in Clark County in 2023, about twice the number recorded two decades earlier. The growth has narrowed—but not erased—the region’s longstanding imbalance in cross-river commuting.
More than 20,000 Oregon residents worked in Clark County, Washington, in 2023, nearly double the number from 20 years earlier, according to the latest Census data. The growing flow of workers heading north reflects Clark County’s expansion, even as commuters traveling south to Portland remain far more numerous.
Clark County added more than 40,000 jobs from 2015 through 2019, a period when the broader Portland-Vancouver region was growing quickly. Federal data show the county’s annual job growth during those years was nearly 5%.
Construction and health care were among the sectors adding jobs as the county’s population grew. Business management employment also increased as more companies established operations there. Vancouver’s redeveloped waterfront—with restaurants, apartments and offices—helped drive hospitality-sector growth before the pandemic.
The pace has since cooled. Clark County’s workforce has fallen in each of the past two years, mirroring weakness on the Portland side of the Columbia River. The number of Washington residents commuting into Oregon has also declined, a trend linked to Portland’s softer labor market.
Despite the shift, Clark County-to-Oregon commuters still outnumber Oregon-to-Clark County commuters by nearly three to one. That is the narrowest gap since at least 2002, indicating a more balanced labor market across the state line than in previous years.
For Oregon residents taking jobs in Washington, state income taxes remain due on wages earned out of state. The commute north can be shorter, too: afternoon trips from downtown Portland to Vancouver often take more than 40 minutes, while the return drive for a Portland resident working in Vancouver typically takes about half as long.