Santa Cruz, California

Unemployment of 5.1% is lower than 24% of the 1,567 measured US cities.

Employment fell 2.0% over the past year, to 32,086 employed residents.

58% of adults hold a four-year degree, higher than 92% of measured US cities.

Household income is higher than at least 88% of measured US cities.

Median rent of $2,452 takes 25% of median household income, below the 30% threshold at which a household is considered cost-burdened.

A median home costs 10.5 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.

Population has fallen 3% since 2020, reaching 62,581 in 2024.

Permitting has turned upward after moving the other way the year before.

93% of recently permitted units are in buildings of five or more homes, so new supply is concentrated in apartments and condominiums rather than detached houses.

At 6.8 permitted units per 1,000 residents, building activity is above the median for measured US cities.

7 of the twelve months have a normal average temperature between 55°F and 80°F. July averages a high of 72°F and January a low of 40°F.

Normal annual precipitation is 22.4 inches.

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.

The hazards accounting for most of this area's expected annual loss are earthquake, inland flooding and drought.

Hazard ratings are AreaProfile calculations derived from the FEMA National Risk Index v1.20.0 (December 2025). FEMA publishes at county level. City values are the population-weighted mean of the counties the city overlaps, using AreaProfile place-to-county land-area weights. FEMA does not endorse this presentation. Higher physical resilience means lower exposure.

AreaProfile does not yet publish tax comparisons. No tax dataset has met the source admission test for coverage, methodology transparency and update cadence, and the product rule is to omit a dimension rather than estimate it. The Area Score is calculated without a tax component and the weighting is documented on the methodology page.

Nothing on AreaProfile is individualized tax advice.

4 major airports lie within 100 miles, the nearest 27 miles away.

Airport identity, position and runway data come from the FAA. “Major airport” is an AreaProfile classification — a public-use civil airport with a paved runway of at least 8,000 feet — not an FAA hub designation. Distances are straight-line, not driving distance.

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 Santa Cruz side by side with a similar place.

Profile recalculated August 29, 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.