Isla Vista, California

Unemployment of 4.2% is lower than 55% of the 3,904 measured US cities.

Employment fell 0.7% over the past year, to 215,731 employed residents.

44% of adults hold a four-year degree, higher than 84% of measured US cities.

Median household income of $25,972 is below 98% of measured US cities.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes city-level labor data only for places of 25,000 or more. This is the figure for Santa Barbara County, CA, which contains this city.

Median rent of $1,878 takes 87% of median household income, above the 30% threshold at which a household is considered cost-burdened.

A median home costs 46.9 times median household income here, well above the historic benchmark, at a level conventionally described as seriously unaffordable.

Both affordability measures come from the same ACS release as the income they are compared with, so the comparison is like for like. They describe housing cost against local earnings and are not a cost-of-living index — transport, groceries, healthcare, insurance and taxes are not included, and a place can look affordable here and still be expensive to live in for reasons this does not capture.

9 of the twelve months have a normal average temperature between 55°F and 80°F. July averages a high of 71°F and January a low of 43°F.

Normal annual precipitation is 19.0 inches.

Air quality measures a median index of 49, in the Good band, and about 2 days a year pass 100, the threshold at which the air is unhealthy for sensitive groups.

Climate figures are thirty-year normals, not current conditions. They describe what a typical year looks like rather than what the weather is doing today. Air quality is measured rather than modelled, by EPA monitors, and published by county only where a monitor sits — roughly half the counties AreaProfile publishes have one, and the rest show nothing rather than an estimate. Air masses are regional, so a county reading describes the air over a place reasonably well, but it is still the county reading.

Three things people look for are missing from every AreaProfile page, and each is missing for a reason rather than by oversight. The Area Score is calculated without them and the weighting is documented on the methodology page.

Reported crime

The FBI’s Crime Data Explorer is the only source for reported offences with national coverage and a published method, and it requires an API key AreaProfile does not hold. Arrest counts, news volume and commercial “safety scores” are not substituted in the meantime. What is published above under Safety is a different measurement — deaths rather than offences, from death certificates rather than police returns — and it covers no property crime at all.

Taxes

No tax dataset has met the source admission test for coverage, transparent methodology and update cadence. Nothing here is individualized tax advice.

Full cost of living

No public source publishes one with national coverage and a documented method. Housing affordability above is computed from published rent, price and income, and excludes transport, groceries, healthcare, insurance and taxes — commuting cost in particular tends to offset suburban housing savings.

Every city here is measured on the same scale from the same source releases, so the comparison is like for like. A higher Area Score reflects AreaProfile’s standardized weighting rather than a judgment about which is the better place to live.

Put Isla Vista side by side with a similar place.

Profile recalculated August 30, 2026. Recalculation is not the same as new source data — each figure above shows the period its source actually covers. Read the full methodology or browse every source.