Costa Mesa is a larger medium-sized coastal city (ie. on the ocean or tidally-influenced rivers) located in the state of California. With a population of 108,785 people and 21 constituent neighborhoods, Costa Mesa is the 49th largest community in California.

Costa Mesa is neither predominently blue-collar or white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, Costa Mesa is a city of sales and office workers, professionals, and service providers. There are especially a lot of people living in Costa Mesa who work in office and administrative support jobs (16.40%), sales jobs (13.44%), and management occupations (11.02%).

Also of interest is that Costa Mesa has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.

One thing noticeable about Costa Mesa, although not a huge city, is that it has a large population of people who are young, single, educated, and upwardly-mobile career starters. That's because Costa Mesa is full of single people in their 20s and 30s and who have undergraduate or graduate degrees and are starting careers in professional occupations. This makes Costa Mesa a pretty good place for young, educated career starters looking to find many people like themselves, with good opportunities for friendships, socializing, romance, and fun.

In addition to being popular with young singles, Costa Mesa is also home to many people who can be described as "urban sophisticates." While both of these categories describe educated professionals, urban sophisticates are quite a different demographic. Urban sophisticates are people who are both educated and wealthy, and thus tend to be older, richer, and more established than young professionals. "Urban sophisticates" is not just about being educated and well-off financially: it is a point of view and state of mind, one that you might call 'urbaneness.' But such people can and do regularly live in small towns, suburbs and rural areas, as well as in big cities. They read, support the arts and high-end shops, and love travel.

One of the nice things about Costa Mesa is that is it nautical, meaning that parts of the city are somewhat historic and on the ocean, or touch tidal bodies of water, such as inlets and tidal rivers. Because of this, visitors and locals will often go to these areas to take in the scenery or to enjoy waterfront activities.

Costa Mesa Information and Demographics

In terms of college education, Costa Mesa is substantially better educated than the typical community in the nation, which has 14.96% of the adults holding a bachelor's degree or graduate degree: 29.09% of adults in Costa Mesa have a college degree.

The per capita income in Costa Mesa in 2000 was $23,342, which is upper middle income relative to California and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $93,368 for a family of four.

Costa Mesa is a very ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Costa Mesa home come from a variety of different races and ancestries. The most prevalent race in Costa Mesa is White, followed by Asian. Costa Mesa also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 31.79% of the city's residents. Important ancestries of people in Costa Mesa include German, English, Irish, and Italian.

In addition, Costa Mesa has a lot of people living here who were born outside of the US (29.16%).

The most common language spoken in Costa Mesa is English. Some people also speak Spanish.