2026 Compare Cities Job Market:
Long Beach, CA vs Santa Barbara, CA

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Highlights
- Job Growth in Santa Barbara has been positive.
- Santa Barbara has 7.4% more unemployment than Long Beach.
- Santa Barbara job growth has increased by 2.7% in the past 10 years.
 Long Beach, CASanta Barbara, CAUnited States
 Current Unemployment  Unlock4.1%6.0%
 Future Job Growth32.5%  Unlock33.5%
 Recent Job Growth  Unlock-6.5%-6.2%
 3 Yr. Job Growth-11.6%  Unlock-3.6%
 5 Yr. Job Growth  Unlock-3.5%-0.7%
 10 Yr. Job Growth-2.8%  Unlock6.3%
Reviews for Long Beach    45 Reviews

Local born and bred. This place is going down the drain. Crime is up, housing is up, yuppies finding nothing wrong with it since they want to validate spending 3k on a 2  More

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Angelique · 
Over 6 years ago

I love Long Beach. I especially shoreline village and the aquarium of the pacific. The only big problem here (for me) is crime. Otherwise, nice  More

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Over 8 years ago

The cost of living is extremely high and there are way too many apartments or multi unit homes which have no parking. But with everyone living on top of each other it  More

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Reviews for Santa Barbara    51 Reviews

I moved to Santa Barbara around 23 years ago to study at Brooks, which like most of the Santa Barbara that I knew—has been destroyed. Homelessness, drugs, gangs, high  More

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Over 5 years ago

I fell in love with Santa Barbara about thirty years ago and finally moved here a few years ago. Because of the price of homes, it is an expensive place to live. The  More

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If you like high crime, paying a $4,500 a month mortgage and crazy high taxes, this is the place for you. It’s too bad because it wasn’t always like this. When I moved  More

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