Commercial Street in downtown Astoria with the former Hotel Astoria building
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North Coast income per person is gaining on the U.S., but less of it comes from paychecks

ByDana Whitcomb

Commercial Street in downtown Astoria. Photo: Steve Morgan, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Income per person on the North Coast grew faster than the national rate in 2024, and Clatsop and Tillamook counties have spent the last decade slowly closing the gap with the rest of the country. But the numbers, released by the state Employment Department on Oct. 30, also show how different the coastal economy is from Portland’s: less than half of personal income here comes from paychecks.

The figures come from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and were broken out for Clatsop, Tillamook and Lincoln counties by Brannigan Vogt in an analysis for the Oregon Employment Department. They aren’t adjusted for inflation.

The headline numbers

Per capita personal income is total income from all sources divided by population. It counts everyone, including children and retirees, so it isn’t the same as an average wage or a typical household’s income. It’s best used for comparing places and tracking change over time.

In 2024, Tillamook County came in at $64,662 per person, the highest of the three coastal counties. Clatsop County was at $63,292 and Lincoln County at $61,973. Oregon’s figure was $70,823, and the national figure was $73,204.

Growth from 2023 to 2024 looked like this:

  • Lincoln: 5.6%
  • Clatsop: 5.1%
  • Oregon: 5.0%
  • Tillamook: 4.7%
  • United States: 4.6%

All three counties beat their own long-term averages. From 2001 to 2024, income per person grew about 3.8% a year in Clatsop and 4.3% a year in Tillamook.

Closing the gap, slowly

The longer view is where Tillamook stands out. In 2015, its income per person was 80.6% of the national level. By 2024 it was 88.3%. Clatsop reached 86.5% of the national level and Lincoln 84.7%.

Clatsop’s history is a little different. Back in 1969, when the timber and fishing economy was still strong, Clatsop’s income per person was 90.5% of the U.S. average, higher than it is now. The county has been climbing back over the past decade but hasn’t returned to that mark.

Where the money comes from

The more striking part of the report is the mix of income. Economists split personal income into three buckets: net earnings from work, property income such as dividends, interest and rent, and transfer receipts like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and unemployment benefits.

Statewide, net earnings made up 58% of personal income in 2024. Nationally it was about 61%. On the North Coast:

  • Clatsop: 49.6% from net earnings
  • Lincoln: 44.7%
  • Tillamook: 43.1%

Transfer payments filled much of the rest. They accounted for 28% of personal income in Clatsop County and 29.3% in Tillamook County, compared with 21.1% across Oregon and 18.3% nationally.

That isn’t a sign of a struggling population so much as an older one. The coast draws retirees who bring Social Security, pensions and investment income with them, and Medicare spending on their care is counted as income to residents. Second-home owners and rental property owners add property income. A big share of the coast’s spending power doesn’t depend on local jobs at all.

That has advantages. Retirement income is steady and doesn’t vanish in a recession the way seasonal tourism wages can. It supports health care, grocery stores, restaurants and contractors year-round.

It also has costs. Retirees and second-home buyers with outside money compete for the same limited housing as people who work in local hotels, schools and hospitals. Tillamook County has reported long-term rental vacancy below 1%, and local governments up and down the coast have spent years trying to get workforce housing built.

The job market

The income report lands alongside a mixed picture for jobs. Unemployment in Clatsop and Tillamook counties has improved this year, to 4.8% and 5% respectively in the most recent regional indicators, but payroll employment was down from a year earlier, with Clatsop County losing about 250 jobs.

Rising income per person and a shrinking payroll aren’t a contradiction here. With so much income arriving from outside the labor market, the two can move in different directions, which is one more reason the coast’s economy rarely tracks the state’s headline numbers.

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