The Central Coast is perhaps best known for its natural beauty, attracting tourists from other California regions and the rest of the world who come to visit Big Sur or drive down the scenic stretches of Highway 1 and Route 101 where farmland and the ocean sit next to one another.

The natural amenities have historically been drivers of the region’s economy via agriculture and fisheries. Salinas, for example, is home to under 160,000 residents but contributes an estimated $8 billion economic impact from the production of staple crops like lettuce, celery, broccoli, and strawberries.

Agriculture in the Central Coast has been both a source of occupational polarization as well as a driver of efforts against polarization. Temporary labor agencies occupy at least five of the top 20 spots on the list of largest employers in Monterey County. These agencies provide cheap, temporary labor—often via workers on H-2A visas—to farms for crop management, harvesting, and packing. 

The region is emerging as a site of development for at least two types of technology that are critical to California’s future: agricultural technology (AgTech) and aerospace. Both industries benefit from the region’s proximity to the Bay Area, yet the proximity has so far discouraged technology companies from locating in the Central Coast towns in which they deploy their products.

The Central Coast is so critical to AgTech that Forbes holds its annual AgTech Summit in the region each year. Vandenberg Space Force Base is also a major driver of the Central Coast’s economy: The base provides roughly 16,000 jobs in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties, a figure that research from the California Polytechnic Institute (2021) projects will grow by over 1,700 jobs per year in the coming decade as the base becomes a launchpad for private companies such as SpaceX.