Ocotillo is a tiny town located in the state of California. With a population of 215 people and just one neighborhood, Ocotillo is the 834th largest community in California.
Because occupations involving physical labor dominate the local economy, Ocotillo is generally considered to be a blue-collar town. 0.00% of the Ocotillo workforce is employed in blue-collar occupations, compared to the national average of 27.7%. Overall, Ocotillo is a town of sales and office workers, transportation and shipping workers, and production and manufacturing workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Ocotillo who work in office and administrative support (0.00%), sales jobs (0.00%), and personal care services (0.00%).
Another notable thing is that Ocotillo is a major vacation destination. Much of the town’s population is seasonal: many people own second homes and only live there part-time, during the vacation season. The effect on the local economy is that many of the businesses are dependent on tourist dollars, and may operate only during the high season. As the vacation season ends, Ocotillo’s population drops significantly, such that year-round residents will notice that the city is a much quieter place to live.
Ocotillo’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, Ocotillo has relatively fewer families with younger children, and/or college students. Combined, this makes Ocotillo a pretty quiet place to live overall. If you like quiet, you will probably enjoy it here.
One of the benefits of Ocotillo is that there is very little traffic. The average commute to work is 0.00 minutes, which is substantially less than the national average. Not only does this mean that the drive to work is less aggravating, but noise and pollution levels are lower as a result.
As is often the case in a small town, Ocotillo doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
In Ocotillo, just 12.10% of people have at least a bachelor's degree, which is quite a bit lower than the national average for cities and towns of 21.84%.
The per capita income in Ocotillo in 2022 was $12,499, which is low income relative to California and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $49,996 for a family of four. Ocotillo also has one of the higher rates of people living in poverty in the nation, with 45.86% of its population below the federal poverty line.
Ocotillo is an extremely ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Ocotillo home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Ocotillo residents report their race to be White. Ocotillo also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 43.31% of the town’s residents. Important ancestries of people in Ocotillo include Portuguese, Yugoslavian, Other West Indian, West Indian, and U.S. Virgin Islander.
Ocotillo also has a high percentage of its population that was born in another country: 26.11%.
The most common language spoken in Ocotillo is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Polish.
The way a neighborhood looks and feels when you walk or drive around it, from its setting, its buildings, and its flavor, can make all the difference. This neighborhood has some really cool things about the way it looks and feels as revealed by NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research. This might include anything from the housing stock to the types of households living here to how people get around.
An interesting characteristic about the neighborhood is that there are more incarcerated people living here than 99.8% of neighborhoods in the U.S. The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, currently with 1 out of every 100 adults in the country are incarcerated as a punishment for crimes committed. The extremely high incarceration rate of this neighborhood could mean that a prison, juvenile detention facility or other correctional facility occupies a large proportion of the neighborhood, or contains a large portion of the neighborhood's population.
In addition, the neighborhood is unique for having just 2.5% of adults here having earned a bachelor's degree. This is a lower rate of college graduates than NeighborhoodScout found in 98.5% of America's neighborhoods.
Also, the neighborhood stands out for having an average per capita income lower than 95.0% of the neighborhoods in the United States.
Each year, fewer and fewer Americans make their living as farmers, foresters, or fishers. But the neighborhood truly stands out among U.S. neighborhoods. According to exclusive NeighborhoodScout analysis, this neighborhood has a greater proportion of farmers, foresters, or fishers than 99.4% of all American neighborhoods. This is truly a unique cultural characteristic of this neighborhood.
In the neighborhood, many people's commute means walking from the bedroom to the home office. NeighborhoodScout's analysis found that 41.7% of residents worked from home. This may not seem like a large number, but Scout's research shows that this is a higher percentage of people working from home than 99.3% of the neighborhoods in America. Often people who work from home are engaged in the creative or technological economy, such as is found in areas around Boston, and in Silicon Valley. Other times, people may be engaged in other businesses like trading stocks from home, or running a small beauty salon.
This neighborhood has wide open spaces, few people, and lots of space to stretch out. If you like locations that fit that description, you may like this neighborhood. Based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis, with only 5 people per square mile living here, this neighborhood is less crowded than 98.2% of America.
In addition, vacant homes and apartments are a significant characteristic of this neighborhood. In fact, with 39.3% of the residential real estate vacant, the neighborhood claims the distinction of having a higher vacancy rate than 97.6% of the neighborhoods in America. This can either be because much of the property is seasonally occupied, like in many vacation areas, or that much of the real estate is more permanently abandoned.
Furthermore, the real estate in this neighborhood consists of more mobile homes than 95.2% of all neighborhoods in America, with 30.3% 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.
Did you know that the neighborhood has more African and Mexican ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 10.3% of this neighborhood's residents have African ancestry and 57.5% have Mexican ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 0.4% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Mon-Khmer, which is the dominant language of Cambodia, at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 97.5% of the neighborhoods in America.
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 Ocotillo are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 95.0% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 24.1% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 75.2% of U.S. neighborhoods.
The old saying "you are what you eat" is true. But it is also true that you are what you do for a living. The types of occupations your neighbors have shape their character, and together as a group, their collective occupations shape the culture of a place.
In the neighborhood, 31.1% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is manufacturing and laborer occupations, with 25.0% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (20.6%), and 13.9% in farming, forestry, or commercial fishing.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is Spanish, spoken by 56.9% of households. Some people also speak English (41.7%).
Ethnicity / Ancestry
Culture is shared learned behavior. We learn it from our parents, their parents, our houses of worship, and much of our culture – our learned behavior – comes from our ancestors. That is why ancestry and ethnicity can be so interesting and important to understand: places with concentrations of people of one or more ancestries often express those shared learned behaviors and this gives each neighborhood its own culture. Even different neighborhoods in the same city can have drastically different cultures.
In the neighborhood in Ocotillo, CA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Mexican (57.5%). There are also a number of people of Sub-Saharan African ancestry (10.9%), and residents who report African roots (10.3%), and some of the residents are also of Irish ancestry (4.1%), along with some German ancestry residents (3.0%), among others. In addition, 13.5% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.
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 30 and 45 minutes commuting one-way to work (41.0% of working residents), which is at or a bit above the average length of a commute across all U.S. neighborhoods.
Here most residents (58.3%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.
