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.
Desert Center is a blue-collar town, with 52.94% of people working in blue-collar occupations, while the average in America is just 27.7%. Overall, Desert Center is a town of service providers, construction workers and builders, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Desert Center who work in office and administrative support (17.65%), healthcare suport services (13.73%), and maintenance occupations (5.88%).
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.
The overall crime rate in Desert Center is one of the lowest in the US. This makes it one of the safer places to live in the country in terms of crime.
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 13.13 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.
In terms of college education, the citizens of Desert Center rank slightly lower than the national average. 14.97% of adults 25 and older in Desert Center have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree, while 21.84% of adults have a 4-year degree or higher in the average American community.
The per capita income in Desert Center in 2022 was $25,685, which is low income relative to California, and lower middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $102,740 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 37.13% 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.
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.
Unpopulated, and rural, the neighborhood is one of the least crowded neighborhoods in all of America. If you like open space, no traffic, and lots of room, this neighborhood may be just what you are looking for. According to NeighborhoodScout's leading research, this neighborhood is less densely populated than 99.6% of the neighborhoods in America.
In addition, the real estate in this neighborhood consists of more mobile homes than 99.0% of all neighborhoods in America, with 49.3% 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.
Furthermore, vacant homes and apartments are a significant characteristic of this neighborhood. In fact, with 39.6% 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.
There are more people living in the neighborhood employed as sales and service workers (52.9%) 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.
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Lithuanian and Mexican ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 1.2% of this neighborhood's residents have Lithuanian ancestry and 57.6% have Mexican 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 96.0% of the neighborhoods in America.
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 83.2% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 11.0% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 52.4% 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, 47.1% 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 25.5% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (14.4%), and 10.3% in executive, management, and professional occupations.
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 48.1% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Chinese.
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 (57.6%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (9.9%), and residents who report English roots (7.0%), and some of the residents are also of German ancestry (4.7%), along with some Ukrainian ancestry residents (1.6%), among others. In addition, 19.2% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.
Even if your neighborhood is walkable, you may still have to drive to your place of work. Some neighborhoods are located where many can get to work in just a few minutes, while others are located such that most residents have a long and arduous commute. The greatest number of commuters in neighborhood spend between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (33.7% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (68.1%) 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 (15.4%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.