Full-time workers across the Central Coast have not shared equally in economic growth over the past four decades. Between 1979 and 2021, real earned income (wages adjusted for inflation) grew dramatically for high earners while stagnating or declining for workers at the bottom. The result is widening inequality: the gap between the 10th percentile and 90th percentile has expanded across the region.

San Luis Obispo County is the only county where earnings grew at all income levels, though they grew unevenly. San Luis Obispo County saw six percent growth in real earned income at the 10th percentile compared to 39 percent at the 90th. Santa Barbara and Ventura counties tell a harsher story. Workers in the bottom 40 percent saw real income declines. In Ventura, the 10th percentile lost 15 percent of their real earnings and the 20th percentile lost 13 percent, while the 90th percentile gained 25 percent. Santa Barbara followed a similar pattern, with losses for low earners and nearly 40 percent gains for high earners.

The divergence reflects four decades of policy choices which led to minimum wage failing to keep pace with inflation, weakening of labor protections and union power, rising costs of housing and healthcare that hit low-wage workers hardest, and concentration of income gains in industries and occupations that low-wage workers cannot access. Reversing those trends requires raising wage floors, strengthening worker protections, and ensuring that cost-of-living increases do not erase wage gains for workers at the bottom.

Insights & Analyses: Central Coast

• Real earned income for full time wage and salary workers in the bottom 10th and 20th percentiles declined in Santa Barbara and Ventura County at a faster rate than the United States between 1979 and 2021. 
• In Santa Barbara County, incomes for full time wage and salary workers in the 10th and 20th percentiles declined at a faster rate relative to the nation. Notably, income growth for workers in the 90th percentile in Santa Barbara County outpaced the national rate.
• In Ventura County, while incomes for workers in the highest income bracket grew 25 percent, similar to the national average, incomes for workers in the lowest income brackets decreased at higher rates (-15 percent compared to -7 percent and -13 percent compared to -5 percent, respectively).
• Real earned income for workers in the highest income brackets grew at a higher rate in San Luis Obispo County than in the U.S. as a whole. Incomes in the 10th percentile grew slightly at 6 percent, but lower than those in higher income brackets.