About 105 new Oregonians are born each day, on average. Welcome! Happy birthday to all 105 of you.
Now, let’s take a moment of reflection for the Oregonians who die each day — 115, on average.
You can do the math. When deaths outnumber births, even by just 10 people a day, that starts adding up over months or years.
New census data lays out the stark demographic challenge facing Oregon, the oldest state in the West with a birth rate among the lowest in the nation.
A shrinking population will squeeze the state’s schools, factories, health care system and just about every other part of Oregon’s economy. There will be fewer people working and fewer workers paying taxes to support public services.
The state’s “natural population growth” — that’s the number you get when you subtract deaths from births — turned negative in 2020. Cumulatively, Oregon deaths have outnumbered births by 19,000 since 2020.
It’s a small change relatively speaking but economists say it matters a lot, especially in states like Oregon that aren’t attracting many migrants. Net migration into Oregon totaled just 56,000 so far this decade, according to the new census numbers.
Immigrants from other countries accounted for nearly all that growth. But the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown means Oregon can’t count on those immigrants in the future.
As a share of the population, Oregon’s natural population growth ranked 40th in the U.S. from 2020 to 2025. The other states with more deaths than births are mostly on the East Coast, led by West Virginia and followed by a trio of states in the Northeast (Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire.)
The states with the highest natural population growth, in percentage terms, are Utah, Alaska, Texas, North Dakota and one of Oregon’s closest neighbors, Idaho.
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