Asphalt driveway cost in Portland, OR

Pick a size, pick a tier: asphalt driveway pricing in Portland

Three bands are cut from the same cited range and localized for Portland wages and prices. They overlap on purpose: a good standard job and a modest premium job can cost the same. The grid below prices the same bands at 4 common sizes.

Asphalt driveway: what moves the price in Portland

• Small jobs cost more per foot

  Paving crews move a paver, roller and trucks to your address, so a 400 sq ft driveway carries more mobilization per square foot than a 1,000 sq ft one.

• Hot-mix price

  Hot-mix asphalt is $100-$200 per ton delivered and moves with oil prices (PaveGauge).

• Sealcoating

  Sealing is $1-$2 per sq ft and is a maintenance cost, not part of the install.

Extras that change the Portland total

Extras are quoted nationally and then scaled to Portland by the average of the local wage index (1.27) and goods index (1.05), a factor of 1.16. Tick any of them in the estimator above to add them to your total. Treat these as planning figures: an add-on touches different trades than the main job, so the scaling is an approximation.

Local wages behind the labor line

Wages are the part of this estimate that changes most from town to town. 3 trades carry the job here, and each is compared with its US median. The weighted result for Portland is 1.27 times the national level.

For paving, surfacing and tamping equipment operators (47-2071, weighted 40%) the local median is $33.91 an hour, which is 32% above the national $25.64. The middle half of them earn between $29.95 and $44.93 an hour. BLS counts 220 of them working in the area, 1.8 for every 10,000 jobs (US: 2.7), so the local bench is thinner than average.

Construction laborers (47-2061), 30% of the weighting: a median of $26.08 an hour, 15% above the US median of $22.66. The middle half of them earn between $21.45 and $31.65 an hour. About 7,950 work in the metro. That is 65.8 per 10,000 jobs, compared with 70.5 nationally, so the supply of crews looks typical.

For operating engineers and other construction equipment operators (47-2073, weighted 30%) the local median is $38.00 an hour, which is 32% above the national $28.78. The middle half of them earn between $31.37 and $50.10 an hour. BLS counts 3,040 of them working in the area, 25.2 for every 10,000 jobs (US: 30.7), so the local bench is thinner than average.

Quotes come from real crews, not medians. If the paving, surfacing and tamping equipment operators on your job are paid at the 75th percentile ($44.93 an hour) instead of the median, the labor line grows by about $370. At the 25th percentile ($29.95) it shrinks by about $130. The total moves by 6.1% or 2.2%, so wages alone rarely explain a quote that is far outside our range.

For context on the local economy, BLS counts 1,208,410 jobs in the Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro area. That makes it the 25th largest of the 300 metros we cover, with 0.78% of US employment.

When to schedule asphalt driveway in Portland

We use NOAA's 1991-2020 climate normals for Portland Intl Ap (5 miles from the city center). These are 30-year monthly averages, not forecasts.

Weather is not a serious constraint for digging, grading and setting material in the ground in Portland: no month in the averages is cold enough (an average overnight low at or below freezing (32°F)) or hot enough (an average daytime high of 90°F or more) to rule it out, so the workable window is all year.

Portland gets about 37 inches of precipitation in a normal year, including roughly 4 inches of snow. The wettest months are January, November and December (5.8 inches in December). The station averages about 15 days a year at 90°F or above.

Does the season change the price? Probably, but we do not have a sourced seasonal price curve, so the estimator shows a year-round figure and does not adjust by month. When you collect quotes, ask whether scheduling in a slower month gets a better rate.

How Portland compares

Same job, same size (600 sq ft), priced for the nearest metros. Olympia is the priciest of the group at $6,500. Yakima is the cheapest at $5,700.

Across 300 US metros, Portland comes in at #37 from the top. The priciest is Kahului, HI at $7,650; the cheapest is Fort Smith, AR at $4,450 (midpoints, 600 sq ft). Statewide, Portland is 4% above the Oregon figure.

Other Oregon metros

Cities with a workforce like Portland's

Big cities and small ones price differently, so here is Portland against the 4 metros with the closest total employment.

What nearby projects cost in Portland

Because every project leans on different trades, Portland's wage level does not move all prices equally. Against the US midpoint, concrete driveway runs +19% and concrete slab +14%.