Workers' Compensation Rates in Oregon (2026)

State Overview

Oregon requires all employers to carry workers' comp. SAIF Corporation serves as the state's not-for-profit workers' comp carrier.

How to find an Oregon workers' comp class code from a job description

There is no Oregon workers' comp class code for a job title. NCCI files the classifications used in Oregon, and the NCCI rules are what an auditor applies, and what gets classified is the employer's business — not the separate employments, occupations or operations inside it. "Machinist", "CNC operator", "general construction labor" and "data entry" are therefore work that sits inside whichever classification describes the business, not values you can look up on their own.

NCCI publishes Oregon's classifications in the Basic Manual for Workers Compensation and Employers Liability Insurance for Oregon (no published edition year — what governs in Oregon is the plan on file with the Director of the Department of Consumer and Business Services, and Oregon's own law names the organization that files it only by function. ORS 737.355(2) lets the director license one or more workers' compensation rating organizations through a competitive selection process established by rule and ORS 737.355(3) makes that license run three years at a time; OAR 836-043-0105(2) then defines Bureau as the licensed rating organization of this state for workers' compensation insurance, never by name. ORS 737.560(2) makes every workers' compensation insurer — including the State Accident Insurance Fund Corporation — a member of a licensed workers' compensation rating organization, and ORS 737.320(3) limits that organization's filing to provisions for claim payment approved or established by the director, with no allowance for or recognition of expenses, taxes or profit, which is why Oregon calls the filed number a pure premium rather than a loss cost. NCCI is the organization doing that work: the Department of Consumer and Business Services records that NCCI develops the pure premium rate for each of more than 500 rating classifications subject to the approval of the Oregon insurance commissioner, and NCCI's own WCIP state instructions for Oregon, as of December 5, 2023, name the state-titled Basic Manual for Oregon alongside the Residual Market Manual for Oregon). To confirm the classification for a specific business, use the Department of Consumer and Business Services' own workers' compensation insurance rates page, the state's public record of who develops Oregon's more than 500 rating classifications and on whose approval their pure premium rates take effect, published by the Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services rather than by NCCI — that is the filed authority for Oregon, and a code quoted from another state's manual is not. Oregon splits the argument into two tracks and puts a hard clock on the one most classification fights actually arrive through. The general route is ORS 737.505: on written request and payment of a reasonable charge, the rating organization or the insurer that made the rate must furnish an affected insured all pertinent information as to that rate, and must provide a means inside Oregon whereby any person aggrieved by the application of its rating system may be heard; if that request is neither granted nor rejected within 30 days the employer may proceed as though it had been rejected, and any party affected has 30 days from written notice of the action to appeal to the Director of the Department of Consumer and Business Services, who holds a hearing on not less than 10 days' written notice and affirms or reverses. The second track is the premium audit, which is where a reclassification usually surfaces: ORS 737.318(3)(d) and ORS 737.505(4) give the employer 60 days from receiving the final premium audit billing to send a written hearing request to the Division of Financial Regulation, and OAR 836-043-0170 then issues a petition form the employer must return with a complete copy of the billing inside another 60 days, refers the matter to the Office of Administrative Hearings, notifies the bureau where the petition addresses the use of the bureau rating system, and lets the director stay collection of the disputed amount alone. OAR 836-043-0170(6) adds a defence worth knowing: a billing missing any of the required elements is not a final premium audit billing at all, and the debt stays uncollectible until every element is included.

Oregon is the state that does not make you go find the manual — it makes your insurer hand you the list. ORS 737.310(12) requires an insurer issuing a workers' compensation policy to an insured for the first time to give written notice of the rating classifications its employees are to be assigned to and an adequate description of the work activities in each, and OAR 836-043-0185 spells out what that notice must contain: the complete description of each assigned classification as it appears in the insurer's classification system filed with and approved by the director, an adequate description of the work activities as reviewed by the director, one or more publications covering basic ratemaking and classification and the records needed to divide one employee's payroll between classifications, and an amendatory endorsement for any reclassification made during the policy year. That is also why Oregon has no public per-code search box: OAR 836-043-0105(4) defines a classification system as the schedule of classifications and the rules used by an insurer, so the authoritative description of your code is the one inside your own carrier's approved filing. Two further Oregon-specific traps. Splitting one employee's payroll between classifications is allowed only on verifiable records — OAR 836-042-0060 requires a time basis, a description of duties and support from original time cards, calendars or daily logs, rules out estimated ratios and percentages outright, and assigns that employee's entire payroll to the highest rated classification exposure when the records do not exist. And a mid-policy reclassification is not simply back-billed: under ORS 737.310(13) the insurer must give 60 days' written notice before charging additional premium, must bill retroactively to policy inception whenever the reclassification reduces premium, and may back-bill without notice only by showing by a preponderance of the evidence that the employer knew its employees were misclassified, supplied improper or inaccurate information, or changed its operations. Finally, an Oregon premium quote is not the Oregon cost: on top of it sit a premium assessment of 9.8 percent in 2026 — 9.9 percent for self-insured employers and public-sector self-insured employer groups, 10.3 percent for private-sector self-insured employer groups — and a Workers' Benefit Fund assessment of 1.8 cents per hour or partial hour worked, of which the employer must pay at least 0.9 cents. The pure premium rate itself fell an average of 3.3 percent for 2026, its thirteenth straight annual decrease.

the Department of Consumer and Business Services' own workers' compensation insurance rates page, the state's public record of who develops Oregon's more than 500 rating classifications and on whose approval their pure premium rates take effect (official Oregon lookup)

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Related Guides for Oregon Employers

• The Complete Guide to Workers' Comp Costs in 2026

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• Compare Workers' Comp Rates by State

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• Workers' Comp Premium Calculator

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• Workers' Comp Class Codes Explained

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• NCCI Class Code Lookup & Directory

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• Experience Modification Rate (EMR) Explained

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• 5 Proven Ways to Lower Your Workers' Comp Premium

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• How Rates Are Calculated: NCCI vs Independent States

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