Oregon Minimum Wage Poster: Where to Post, Updates, and Penalties

Every Oregon workplace must display the state’s official minimum wage poster where employees can easily see it, and the Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) makes the Oregon minimum wage poster available as a free PDF download. ORS 653.050 requires any employer paying minimum wage or operating under BOLI rules to keep a summary of Oregon’s wage and hour laws posted in a conspicuous and accessible spot on the premises.¹ Willfully skipping the requirement can bring a civil penalty of up to $1,000 per violation.²

Where to Download the Poster

BOLI publishes the official poster as a free PDF on its required worksite postings page, with versions in English, Arabic, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, and Vietnamese.³ You pick the version that matches your location, download it, and print it at standard size. The bureau’s homepage also has a Posters and Handbooks section that links to the same files.⁴

Oregon posters should be displayed in the languages the employer uses to communicate with employees.³ If your crew communicates in Spanish day to day, posting only the English version falls short.

Watch for Poster Scams

There is never a reason to pay for Oregon’s minimum wage poster. Official-looking mailers that demand payment for a “required compliance poster” are almost always a scam. The FTC has taken enforcement action against companies that sent invoices mimicking government notices, cited federal statutes to create urgency, and charged businesses roughly $84 for posters available at no cost.⁵ If a mailing includes a “Business ID” number and a response deadline, treat it as junk.

Pick the Version That Matches Your Location

Oregon has no single statewide minimum wage. The state is split into three geographic zones, each with its own rate, and the poster you display has to match the zone where the workplace sits. For July 1, 2025 through June 30, 2026, the rates are:⁶

Portland Metro: $16.30 per hour. Covers employers inside the urban growth boundary of the Portland metropolitan service district, which includes parts of Clackamas, Multnomah, and Washington counties.
Standard: $15.05 per hour. Applies to employers outside the Portland metro boundary who are not in a designated non-urban county. This tier covers cities like Salem, Eugene, Bend, and Medford, along with surrounding suburban and coastal areas.
Non-urban: $14.05 per hour. Applies to employers in eighteen rural counties: Baker, Coos, Crook, Curry, Douglas, Gilliam, Grant, Harney, Jefferson, Klamath, Lake, Malheur, Morrow, Sherman, Umatilla, Union, Wallowa, and Wheeler.

The statute fixes the gaps between tiers: Portland Metro is always $1.25 above the Standard rate, and Non-urban is always $1.00 below it.⁷ A company with locations in more than one zone needs different posters at each site. A warehouse in Bend and a retail shop in downtown Portland require different rate displays.

Replace the Poster Every July

Oregon’s scheduled rate increases ended after June 30, 2023. Since then, BOLI adjusts the Standard rate each year based on inflation. The bureau compares the U.S. City Average Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers from March of the prior year to March of the current year, rounds the result to the nearest five cents, and publishes the new rate by April 30. The updated rates take effect every July 1.⁸ Check for a new poster every spring, even if you downloaded one the year before. Keeping the digital file saved makes reprinting easy if the posted copy gets damaged or faded.

Where to Hang the Poster

The statute calls for a “conspicuous and accessible place in or about the premises where the employees are employed.”¹ In most workplaces that means a break room, a hallway near the time clock, or wherever workers naturally gather. Employees should encounter the poster during normal routines without having to ask for access.

A poster tucked behind a door that’s usually open, or taped to a wall in a storage room nobody visits, does not meet the standard. If your business has multiple buildings on one property with separate work crews, each building should have its own posting.

Remote and Off-Site Employees

Workers who never set foot in a central office still have the right to see required notices. BOLI requires employers to provide posters electronically or by mail to remote workers.³ An email with the PDF attached, or a company intranet page where the poster is always available, both work, as long as employees know where to find it.

Federal guidance adds useful detail. The Department of Labor’s Field Assistance Bulletin 2020-7 says electronic posting can fully replace a hard copy only when all employees work remotely, all customarily receive information electronically, and all have ready access to the posting at all times without requesting special permission.⁹ For a mixed workforce, the safer approach is to keep the physical poster at the worksite and distribute it electronically to remote staff. Burying the notice in a shared drive nobody visits does not count.

What the Poster Actually Covers

The poster is not only about hourly rates. ORS 653.050 requires employers to post summaries of the full wage-and-hour chapter (ORS 653.010 through 653.261) and all rules the Commissioner has adopted under it.¹ The official BOLI poster covers overtime and required breaks alongside the wage rate.

On overtime, Oregon law authorizes the Commissioner to set standards; current rules trigger overtime after 40 hours in a single workweek, and the rate cannot exceed one and a half times the employee’s regular pay.¹⁰ On breaks, employers owe each worker a paid 10-minute rest break for every four-hour segment (or major portion of four hours) worked, and any shift of six hours or more triggers a 30-minute unpaid meal period during which the employee must be relieved of all duties. If the employer keeps the worker on task during that time, the full 30 minutes becomes paid.¹¹

Penalties for Not Posting

Under ORS 653.256, the Commissioner of BOLI can impose a civil penalty of up to $1,000 against any person who willfully violates the posting requirement in ORS 653.050. Each violation is assessed separately, so multiple locations or multiple missing posters can multiply the exposure.² On top of that, ORS 653.991 makes any violation of the wage-and-hour chapter punishable as a misdemeanor, though criminal prosecution for a missing poster would be unusual.¹²

The more practical risk is that a BOLI investigator visiting your workplace on any wage complaint will spot a missing or outdated poster right away. That observation can open the door to a broader audit of your pay practices. Keeping the poster current and visible is one of the cheapest compliance steps a business can take, and there is no reason to get it wrong when the document is free.