San Mateo 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 92,372 people and 26 constituent neighborhoods, San Mateo is the 65th largest community in California.

Unlike some cities, San Mateo isn't mainly white- or blue-collar. Instead, the most prevalent occupations for people in San Mateo are a mix of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, San Mateo is a city of sales and office workers, professionals, and managers. There are especially a lot of people living in San Mateo who work in office and administrative support jobs (15.50%), management occupations (13.26%), and sales jobs (12.37%).

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

One thing noticeable about San Mateo, 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 San Mateo 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 San Mateo 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, San Mateo is also home to many people who can be described as "urban sophisticates," which are people who are not only wealthy and employed in professional occupations, but highly educated to boot. Urban sophisticates have urbane tastes - whether they reside in a big or small city, a suburb, or a little town. Urban sophisticates support bookstores, quality clothing stores, enjoy luxury travel, and in big cities, they are truly the patrons of the arts, attending and supporting institutions such as opera, symphony, ballet, and theatre.

One of the nice things about San Mateo 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.

San Mateo Information and Demographics

The citizens of San Mateo are very well educated compared to the average community in the nation: 38.58% of adults in San Mateo have a bachelor's degree or even advanced degree.

The per capita income in San Mateo in 2000 was $36,176, which is wealthy relative to California and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $144,704 for a family of four. However, San Mateo contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.

San Mateo is an extremely ethnically-diverse city. The people who call San Mateo home come from a variety of different races and ancestries. The most prevalent race in San Mateo is White, followed by Asian. San Mateo also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 20.54% of the city's residents. Important ancestries of people in San Mateo include Italian, German, Irish, and English.

Foreign born people are also an important part of San Mateo's cultural character, accounting for 30.16% of the city's population.

The languages spoken by people in San Mateo are also diverse. These are tabulated as the languages people preferentially speak when they are at home with their families. The most common language spoken in San Mateo is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish, Chinese, and Tagalog.