Turn on the TV news, read the headlines or social media, or even pick up your daily newspaper and you’ll probably encounter a lot of talk about the economy. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if you read about financial statistics like our U.S national debt, unemployment rates, and even homeownership rates. But far less often do we get good, solid data on an area closer to home – Sacramento, California.

In this two-part series, we ask Sacramento (and Sacramentans) the critical questions, “What’s in your wallet?” by examining just about every shred of economic data available for the capital city of California.

Last week, we looked in Sacramento’s wallet to find out everything we could about credit scores, debt, and consumer spending.

Today, we take that wallet out again to learn about Sacramento’s income, employment, housing and real estate, and other consumer statistics.

Income

The median household income in Sacramento is now $65,715.

Over the last few years, household income has grown at a rate of 3.2% per year in Sacramento.

The Sactown median income has only grown by 5% since 2010 but, if we zoom out to the period since 2000, the Sacramento median income has jumped up by 31%.

The average Sacramento household now has a net worth of $475,839.

The average hourly wage for all earners in Sacramento is $26.30
By comparison, the U.S. average is $23.86, or about 10% less than in California’s capital city.

Here are the average hourly wages by industry and occupation in Sacramento:

Lawyers
$62.41
$67.25 (U.S. average)

Registered nurses
$54.54
$34.70 (U.S. average)

Civil engineers
$50.62
$43.14 (U.S. average)

Computer systems analysts
$40.28
$44.05 (U.S. average)

Accountants and auditors
$33.97
$36.89 (U.S. average)

Carpenters
$24.13
$23.24 (U.S. average)

Construction laborers
$21.12
$18.22 (U.S. average)

Medical secretaries
$20.62
$16.85 (U.S. average)

Retail salespersons
$14.11
$13.07 (U.S. average)

Cooks, fast food
$10.82
$9.89 (U.S. average)

By county, these are the average weekly incomes in and around Sacramento:
Sacramento County $1,100 or higher
Yolo County $1,000 – $1,099
El Dorado County $899 or below
Placer County $1,000 – $1,099

Employment

The levels of unemployment in Sacramento usually fluctuate right around the national U.S. averages, sometimes exceeding it and sometimes, dipping below that percentage.

Here are the unemployment rates for Sacramento and surrounding counties, as well as the U.S.:

4.8% January 2017
3.8% January 2018

El Dorado
4.7% January 2017
3.6% January 2018

Placer County
4.0% January 2017
3.1% January 2018

Yolo County
5.8% January 2017
4.6% January 2018

The U.S.
4.5% January 2017
3.9% Dec 2017

Now, let’s look at the percentage of Sacrament’s population that works in each occupation:

Agriculture, forestry, fishing, hunting
0.61% Sacramento
1.35% U.S. average

Mining, quarrying, oil and gas extraction
0.04% Sacramento
0.61% U.S. average

Construction
5.74% Sacramento
6.19% U.S. average

Manufacturing
4.89% Sacramento
10.41% U.S. average

Wholesale trade
2.55% Sacramento
2.72% U.S. average

Retail trade
10.41% Sacramento
11.55% U.S. average

Transportation and warehousing
3.81% Sacramento
4.11% U.S. average

Information Systems
2.38% Sacramento
2.12% U.S. average

Finance and insurance
4.49% Sacramento
4.69% U.S. average

Real estate, rental, leasing
2.07% Sacramento
1.89% U.S. average

Professional, scientific, technical services
6.66% Sacramento
6.68% U.S. average

Management of companies
0.05% Sacramento
0.08% U.S. average

Administrative, support, waste management services
5.63% Sacramento
4.27% U.S. average

Educational services
8.39% Sacramento
9.34% U.S. average

Health care and social assistance
14.41% Sacramento
13.81%

Arts, entertainment, recreation
2.30% Sacramento
2.16% U.S. average

Accommodation, food services
7.74% Sacramento
7.44% U.S. average

Public administration
12.11% Sacramento
4.80% U.S. average

Housing and real estate

Currently, the median home sale price in Sacramento is $335,700.

That represents a change of +9.4% from one year ago.

Sacramento’s Housing Affordability Index is 133; 33% higher than the national average (but still less than all other major cities in California.)

Sacramento is home to 283,982 households between the city and Sacramento County.

Of these Sacramento housing units:
55.2% are owner-occupied
44.8% are occupied by renters

Since the U.S. homeownership rate is now around 63%, Sacramento falls short of that mark.
Of all these owner-occupied properties in Sacramento, 73.8% still have a mortgage, compared to 26.2% that are paid off or mortgage-free.
The average mortgage debt in Sacramento (among homeowners) is $201,811.

Other consumer financial statistics:

Just like the home price index, the Cost of Living Index in Sacramento is higher than the national average (114 in Sacramento, or +114% of the national average,) but still far less than California’s overall Cost of Living Index of 137%.

Sacramento is expected to see steady but positive projected annual job growth of 1.3% year-to-year.

With a population of 2,297,500 in the greater Sacramento metropolitan area, the region enjoys a Gross Metro Product of $137.8 billion.

Forbes Magazine named Sacramento several times on their list of business-friendly cities in the U.S. Out of hundreds of cities, Sacramento ranked #75 Best Places for Business and Careers, #187 in Cost of Doing Business, top-10 happiest place to work, and #41 in Job Growth according to the financial magazine’s rankings.