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Desert Center, CA

This is a small community in a single neighborhood. As throughout the site, some neighborhood-level data are reserved for subscribers.





Overview


Desert Center is a tiny town located in the state of California. With a population of 256 people and just one neighborhood, Desert Center is the 826th largest community in California.

Occupations and Workforce

Desert Center is neither predominantly blue-collar nor white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, Desert Center is a town of professionals, sales and office workers, and service providers. There are especially a lot of people living in Desert Center who work in office and administrative support (14.29%), sales jobs (10.00%), and healthcare (10.00%).

Of important note, Desert Center is also a town of artists. Desert Center has more artists, designers and people working in media than 90% of the communities in America. This concentration of artists helps shape Desert Center’s character.

A relatively large number of people in Desert Center telecommute to their jobs. Overall, about 14.29% of the workforce works from home. While this may seem like a small number, as a fraction of the total workforce it ranks among the highest in the country. These workers are often telecommuters who work in knowledge-based, white-collar professions. For example, Silicon Valley has large numbers of people who telecommute. Other at-home workers may be self-employed people who operate small businesses out of their homes.

Setting & Lifestyle

Another notable thing is that Desert Center is an extremely popular vacation destination. A significant portion of the population is seasonal. During the vacation season, the town experiences a large influx of people who take up residence in second homes they own in the area. As the vacation season ends, the population drops again, leaving behind a substantially quieter and smaller town.

Desert Center’s overall crime rate ranks among the lowest in the nation, making it a very safe place to live.

The town is relatively quiet, having a combination of lower population density and few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. For example, Desert Center has relatively fewer families with younger children, and/or college students. Combined, this makes Desert Center a pretty quiet place to live overall. If you like quiet, you will probably enjoy it here.

Residents of the town have the good fortune of having one of the shortest daily commutes compared to the rest of the country. On average, they spend only 15.75 minutes getting to work every day.

Desert Center is a small town, and as such doesn't have a public transit system that people use to get to and from their jobs every day.

Demographics

In terms of college education, Desert Center is substantially better educated than the typical community in the nation, which has 21.84% of the adults holding a bachelor's degree or graduate degree: 29.41% of adults in Desert Center have a college degree.

The per capita income in Desert Center in 2022 was $31,393, which is lower middle income relative to California, and middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $125,572 for a family of four. However, Desert Center contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.

Desert Center is an extremely ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Desert Center home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Desert Center residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Desert Center also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 29.32% of the town’s residents. Important ancestries of people in Desert Center include Irish, German, English, Welsh, and Italian.

The most common language spoken in Desert Center is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Pacific Island languages.

Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics

When you see a neighborhood for the first time, the most important thing is often the way it looks, like its homes and its setting. Some places look the same, but they only reveal their true character after living in them for a while because they contain a unique mix of occupational or cultural groups. This neighborhood is very unique in some important ways, according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive exploration and analysis.

Real Estate

Uncrowded roads, rural America and space to be the individual you are. If you like these characteristics, this neighborhood may fit you. With just 0 residents per square mile, is less crowded than 99.6% of all U.S. neighborhoods.

In addition, the real estate in this neighborhood consists of more mobile homes than 98.2% of all neighborhoods in America, with 43.1% of the occupied housing here being classified as mobile homes. So if you are looking for a mobile home, or you like the look and feel of mobile home parks, this neighborhood might have the setting you desire.

Furthermore, despite all of the residential real estate here in the neighborhood, NeighborhoodScout has discovered that much of it is vacant. In resort or second-home vacation areas, this naturally occurs because homes and apartments are seasonally occupied, and empty for a portion of the year. In non-vacation or resort areas, however, this can be an indicator of property abandonment or a weak real estate market. The vacancy rate here is 40.3%, which is higher than 97.5% of all U.S. neighborhoods.

Occupations

There are more people living in the neighborhood employed as sales and service workers (51.4%) than almost any neighborhood in the country. From fast-food service workers to major sales accounts, sales and service workers make up the largest proportion of our national employment picture. But despite that size and importance nationally, this neighborhood still stands out as unique due to the dominance of people living here who work in such occupations.

Diversity

Did you know that the neighborhood has more Lithuanian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 1.7% of this neighborhood's residents have Lithuanian ancestry.

is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 6.0% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Chinese at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 95.9% of the neighborhoods in America.

The Neighbors

How wealthy a neighborhood is, from very wealthy, to middle income, to low income is very formative with regard to the personality and character of a neighborhood. Equally important is the rate of people, particularly children, who live below the federal poverty line. In some wealthy gated communities, the areas immediately surrounding can have high rates of childhood poverty, which indicates other social issues. NeighborhoodScout's analysis reveals both aspects of income and poverty for this neighborhood.

The neighbors in the neighborhood in Desert Center are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 80.0% of U.S. neighborhoods. In addition, 9.2% of the children seventeen and under living in this neighborhood are living below the federal poverty line, which is a lower rate of childhood poverty than is found in 52.7% of America's neighborhoods.

A neighborhood is far different if it is dominated by enlisted military personnel rather than people who earn their living by farming. It is also different if most of the neighbors are clerical support or managers. What is wonderful is the sheer diversity of neighborhoods, allowing you to find the type that fits your lifestyle and aspirations.

In the neighborhood, 48.6% of the working population is employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is manufacturing and laborer occupations, with 24.6% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in executive, management, and professional occupations (14.2%), and 12.3% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.

Languages

The languages spoken by people in this neighborhood are diverse. These are tabulated as the languages people preferentially speak when they are at home with their families. The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 51.6% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Chinese.

Ethnicity / Ancestry

Boston's Beacon Hill blue-blood streets, Brooklyn's Orthodox Jewish enclaves, Los Angeles' Persian neighborhoods. Each has its own culture derived primarily from the ancestries and culture of the residents who call these neighborhoods home. Likewise, each neighborhood in America has its own culture – some more unique than others – based on lifestyle, occupations, the types of households – and importantly – on the ethnicities and ancestries of the people who live in the neighborhood. Understanding where people came from, who their grandparents or great-grandparents were, can help you understand how a neighborhood is today.

In the neighborhood in Desert Center, CA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Mexican (51.3%). There are also a number of people of English ancestry (11.6%), and residents who report Irish roots (8.2%), and some of the residents are also of German ancestry (7.7%), along with some Lithuanian ancestry residents (1.7%), among others. In addition, 15.7% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.

Getting to Work

How you get to work – car, bus, train or other means – and how much of your day it takes to do so is a large quality of life and financial issue. Especially with gasoline prices rising and expected to continue doing so, the length and means of one's commute can be a financial burden. Some neighborhoods are physically located so that many residents have to drive in their own car, others are set up so many walk to work, or can take a train, bus, or bike. The greatest number of commuters in neighborhood spend between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (34.3% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.

Here most residents (68.6%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also carpool with coworkers, friends, or neighbors to get to work (21.8%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.


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Economics & Demographics include:
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Migration & Mobility
Race & Ethnic Diversity
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Crime includes:
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Schools include:
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