WalletHub placed Oregon 49th in its latest jobs ranking, with only West Virginia finishing lower.

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Oregon landed near the bottom of a new national ranking of the best states for jobs, finishing 49th out of 50. The WalletHub report, published October 28, gave Oregon a score of 43.65 out of 100. Only West Virginia ranked lower, while Nebraska took the top spot.

For Oregonians sending out applications or weighing a career change, that’s a discouraging result. But the ranking measures more than how many employers are hiring. WalletHub combined 34 measures covering job opportunities, employment conditions, pay, taxes, benefits, and other factors to reach its overall standings.

Where Oregon fell short

Oregon ranked 39th in WalletHub’s job market category and 49th in its economic environment category. The first covers factors such as unemployment, employment growth, job security, and access to benefits. The second includes cost-of-living-adjusted income, starting salaries, income-tax burdens, commuting, and working conditions for parents.

That distinction helps explain the headline number. Oregon’s second-to-last finish reflects the combined score across both categories, rather than a second-to-last ranking for hiring alone. Its economic environment placement was considerably worse than its job market placement.

Several individual comparisons were also unfavorable. WalletHub placed Oregon 48th for job opportunities and 48th in its unemployment-rate comparison, where lower rankings represent less favorable conditions. Its job opportunities measure combines openings relative to the labor force with the unemployment rate, so that placement shouldn’t be read as a count of available jobs.

Oregon also appeared near the bottom for work-related stress, finishing 49th in that comparison. There’s a limitation worth understanding before treating that as a current statewide assessment: WalletHub’s methodology uses an outside analysis of geotagged tweets to measure this factor. It isn’t a new survey of Oregon workers conducted for the October report.

Washington finished sixth

The results looked very different across the Columbia River. Washington finished sixth overall with a score of 61.37, compared with Oregon’s 43.65. Washington ranked first in economic environment, although its job market ranking, at 35th, was only four places ahead of Oregon.

Elsewhere in the region, California finished 25th, Nevada 16th, and Idaho 39th. Nebraska led the country, followed by North Dakota, Minnesota, South Dakota, and New Hampshire. At the bottom, Louisiana, Florida, and Pennsylvania joined Oregon and West Virginia in the final five.

Washington’s split between its two category rankings shows how much the broader economic measures can affect the outcome. A state can finish high overall without placing near the top for its job market category. Comparing the category scores gives job seekers more information than the overall number alone.

How WalletHub calculated the ranking

WalletHub assigned 60 of the 100 possible points to job market measures and 40 to economic environment measures. Individual factors carried different weights, with employment growth, employment outlook, and job security receiving more weight than several other measures. The company says the data used in the ranking were collected as of September 30, 2026.

That collection date doesn’t mean every underlying statistic describes September. The methodology draws on multiple sources and time periods, including a job security calculation comparing employment in 2025 with 2024. It also incorporates findings from other reports, including WalletHub’s rankings for working mothers and fathers.

Oregon did have at least one favorable showing among the highlighted comparisons. It placed fourth for shortest time spent working. That measure concerns average workweek length, and it doesn’t establish how productive Oregon employees are or how hard an individual works.

What the ranking means for job seekers

A statewide ranking can help identify questions to ask about pay, benefits, and hiring conditions, but it can’t tell someone how their particular job search will go. The report’s overall table doesn’t separate opportunities in Portland from those in Eugene, Bend, or rural communities. It also doesn’t provide a personal forecast for applicants in a particular occupation.

For Oregon, the result is a poor showing across WalletHub’s chosen mix of employment and economic measures. The useful detail is in the split: 39th for job market conditions, 49th for economic environment, and 49th overall. Readers can examine the full methodology and state comparisons to see which factors matter most to their own search.