Cities with Lowest Unemployment in California

Cities ranked by lowest civilian unemployment rate. 50 cities ranked from official U.S. government data.

What this California ranking shows

According to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates, the CDC PLACES population-level health analysis, and the CMS Hospital Compare quality data, Areazine ranks U.S. cities across more than 19,000 incorporated places, census-designated places, and consolidated city-county governments. State-level city rankings combine these federal datasets to produce intra-state comparisons across demographics, economics, health outcomes, and hospital quality.

El Dorado Hills leads 50 California cities at 4.5%, while Prunedale sits at the bottom with 5% — a total spread of 0.5% on unemployment rate. The top 5 occupy 0% of that range, indicating a tightly-clustered top tier — the leading cities are nearly indistinguishable on this metric.

The median California city in this list sits at 4.8%, 0.3% behind El Dorado Hills. See our methodology for ranking construction, data vintage, refresh cadence, and the federal upstream tables we join, and triangulate via the 8 other California rankings below — cities that lead on multiple lenses are the most robust signals.

Top 5 — Lowest Unemployment

Top 5 California cities ranked by unemployment rate
Rank City unemployment rate Population
#1 El Dorado Hills 4.5% 42K
#2 South Lake Tahoe 4.5% 22K
#3 Cameron Park 4.5% 18K
#4 Diamond Springs 4.5% 11K
#5 Placerville 4.5% 11K

Lowest Unemployment 50

1 El Dorado Hills
4.5%
2 South Lake Tahoe
4.5%
3 Cameron Park
4.5%
4 Diamond Springs
4.5%
5 Placerville
4.5%
6 Roseville
4.8%
7 Daly City
4.8%
8 San Mateo
4.8%
9 Redwood City
4.8%
10 South San Francisco
4.8%
11 Rocklin
4.8%
12 Lincoln
4.8%
13 San Bruno
4.8%
14 Pacifica
4.8%
15 Foster City
4.8%
16 Menlo Park
4.8%
17 Burlingame
4.8%
18 San Carlos
4.8%
19 East Palo Alto
4.8%
20 Belmont
4.8%
21 Millbrae
4.8%
22 Granite Bay
4.8%
23 North Fair Oaks
4.8%
24 Auburn
4.8%
25 North Auburn
4.8%
26 Half Moon Bay
4.8%
27 Hillsborough
4.8%
28 Redwood Shores
4.8%
29 San Jose
4.9%
30 Sunnyvale
4.9%
31 Santa Clara
4.9%
32 Mountain View
4.9%
33 Milpitas
4.9%
34 Palo Alto
4.9%
35 Cupertino
4.9%
36 Gilroy
4.9%
37 Morgan Hill
4.9%
38 Campbell
4.9%
39 Saratoga
4.9%
40 Los Gatos
4.9%
41 Los Altos
4.9%
42 Alum Rock
4.9%
43 Stanford
4.9%
44 Communications Hill
4.9%
45 Salinas
5%
46 Seaside
5%
47 Monterey
5%
48 Soledad
5%
49 Marina
5%
50 Prunedale
5%

More California Rankings 8

Safest Cities in California Most Affordable Cities in California Most Expensive Cities in California Highest Income Cities in California Largest Cities in California Fastest Growing Cities in California Most Educated Cities in California Youngest Cities in California
All cities in California → Compare El Dorado Hills vs South Lake Tahoe → All comparisons →

Reading this California ranking responsibly

Single-metric rankings are useful precisely because they are honest about what they measure. A "highest income" ranking does not tell you that the top-ranked city is the best place to live in California; it tells you that, among cities of population ten thousand and above in California that have a published median household income field in the most recent American Community Survey five-year estimates, this city has the highest such value. That precise definition matters, because composite "best places" lists from real-estate marketing sites and lifestyle magazines often combine income with subjective weights on schools, walkability, and amenities, producing a score whose components are not disclosed and whose ordering is not reproducible. Areazine's editorial commitment is to keep the underlying field, source, and vintage visible so the reader can audit any rank in this list against the canonical federal record.

Cross-checking against other rankings is a useful sanity test. A city that appears in the top ten on three or more different rankings — for example, highest income, most educated, and lowest poverty — is showing a robust signal across multiple independent dimensions. A city that appears in the top ten on only one ranking and middling on the others is showing a narrower signal, often driven by a single statistical artifact (a small population pulling the per-capita measure, a recent acquisition spike inflating median home value, an outlier survey year). The other nine California rankings linked above provide that cross-check at zero extra effort.

Data Sources

Population and economic data from the Census Bureau American Community Survey (2022 5-year estimates). Health data from the CDC PLACES (2023). Ranking computations use U.S. Census Bureau reference geographies. Crime statistics, where referenced, originate from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting program (also accessible via the Crime Data Explorer).

Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.