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The Oregon Center for Nursing (OCN), an independent nonprofit research organization, published a new report re-releasing data from their comprehensive 2023 survey that shows that Oregon’s registered nurses are earning some of the highest wages in the country — and those pay increases are now outpacing inflation, cost‑of‑living growth and wage trends in other sectors. Becker’s also recently published a ranking of nurse wages, which corroborates the Oregon Center for Nursing’s data, listing Oregon wages as the highest in the nation, once adjusted for cost of living.
According to OCN’s analysis, Oregon’s average RN wages have climbed sharply in recent years. Hospital‑based nurses continue to earn the most, but the report notes that wage growth has accelerated across nearly every practice setting.
What makes Oregon stand out is the gap between RN pay and the state’s broader economic indicators. Like all other states, Oregon’s cost of living has risen steadily, but nurse wages have grown even faster in Oregon, widening the distance between RN earnings and those of other health care and non‑health care workers.
For Oregon, the implications are mixed. Higher wages may help keep nurses in the profession and attract new students to nursing programs, but the rate of growth far outpaces payment increases from Medicare and Medicaid. This divergence is not sustainable without a fundamental reckoning of healthcare economics in the state.
Still, the data makes one thing clear: Oregon is paying a premium for its nursing workforce, and that premium is growing faster than the economic forces around it. Nurses are critical to the care of patients. Affordability is critical for those patients to access care. This balance is delicate but very important to protect access to care in Oregon.
Read the full report here: https://www.oregoncenterfornursing.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/OCN_2026Report_WageStudyFnl-1.pdf
