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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

Unlike some towns where white-collar or blue-collar occupations dominate the local economy, Desert Center is neither predominantly one nor the other. Instead, it has a mixed workforce of both white- and blue-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.

Telecommuters are a relatively large percentage of the workforce: 14.29% of people work from home. While this number may seem small overall, as a fraction of the total workforce it is high relative to the nation. 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 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, Desert Center’s population drops significantly, such that year-round residents will notice that the city is a much quieter place to live.

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.

As is often the case in a small town, Desert Center doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.

Demographics

The education level of Desert Center citizens is substantially higher than the typical US community, as 29.41% of adults in Desert Center have at least a bachelor's 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

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.

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, vacant homes and apartments are a significant characteristic of this neighborhood. In fact, with 40.3% of the residential real estate vacant, the neighborhood claims the distinction of having a higher vacancy rate than 97.5% 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.

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

There are two complementary measures for understanding the income of a neighborhood's residents: the average and the extremes. While a neighborhood may be relatively wealthy overall, it is equally important to understand the rate of people - particularly children - who are living at or below the federal poverty line, which is extremely low income. Some neighborhoods with a lower average income may actually have a lower childhood poverty rate than another with a higher average income, and this helps us understand the conditions and character of a 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

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 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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