California — Annual Ocean Economy Employment
Average annual jobs in California's coastal ocean economy, summed across six marine sectors from tourism and recreation to marine transportation, as estimated by NOAA. Unit: jobs.
ArchiveFrom before CK Economics turned to global trade on October 16, 2026. Its figures are still collected and it stays at this address, but it is no longer part of our trade coverage.
Official statisticSource figures as of October 10, 2026Sources & methods
- Period covered
- 2001 – 2024
- Source figures as of
- October 10, 2026
- Geography
- Coastal California (shoreline and near-shore counties)
- Sector
- Blue Economy Data & Economic Intelligence (archived)
- Seasonal adjustment
- Not applicable
- Transformations
- Views other than the level (changes, averages, volatility) are calculated by CK Economics from these figures
- Revisions
- Replaced with the source’s latest figures whenever it revises them.
- Data status
- Current
No projectionIn backtests at 14 past dates, a statistical projection (exponential smoothing, damped trend) was not clearly better than a no-change forecast: its errors over the next year were 30% larger, short of the 5% improvement needed, so none is shown. How we decide
Key figures
CK estimateJobs · calculated by CK Economics from NOAA Office for Coastal Management data
- Latest · 2024
- 601,788
- −1.3% vs a year earlier1
- 5-year change
- −2.1%
- since 2019, −0.4% a year2
- 10-year change
- +11.8%
- since 2014, +1.1% a year2
- Record high
- 614,413
- 20193
- Record low
- 469,692
- 20033
- Where the latest ranks
- 82nd pct.
- Higher than 82% of the other 23 observations since 20014
- 1Latest observation against the observation one year earlier (for weekly data, the nearest within three days).
- 2Latest observation against the observation five and ten years earlier; the yearly rate is the compound annual growth rate over the span.
- 3Highest and lowest published observations across the full history shown.
- 4Share of the other published observations that are lower than the latest one, rounded down.
Methodology
Each value is Open ENOW's employment for the "All Ocean Sectors" total in coastal California: average annual jobs at establishments in six marine sectors (living resources, marine construction, marine transportation, offshore mineral resources, ship and boat building, tourism and recreation). NOAA builds it from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages for a fixed list of NAICS industries in shoreline and near-shore counties, using Census ZIP Code Business Patterns to keep only the share of tourism and recreation jobs in shoreline ZIP codes. It counts wage and salary jobs, including most part-time and seasonal ones; it excludes self-employed workers (NOAA publishes those separately), and it is a job count, not a count of people or establishments. In 2024, tourism and recreation made up 73.0% of the total, marine transportation 22.0%, living resources 1.5%, ship and boat building 1.4%, marine construction 1.3% and offshore mineral resources 0.8%. Public county QCEW figures are often suppressed for confidentiality, so NOAA imputes the gaps: first by interpolating between known years for the same county and industry, then by extrapolating from the nearest known year using the state-level trend or the change in establishment counts, and finally from average employment per establishment in the broader 5- or 4-digit industry. Imputation makes Open ENOW less precise than the original ENOW, and the 2020 drop (about 21% below 2019) reflects pandemic closures in restaurants and hotels. Values are taken as published, with no transformation. Open ENOW (2001–2024) bridges a pause in the original ENOW series (2005–2021), which used confidential establishment-level BLS microdata that are not currently available. Open ENOW adds five industries (other warehousing, other traveler accommodation, recreational camps, drinking places, and amusement and theme parks), so its California totals run above the original series (614,413 vs 598,327 jobs in 2019; 519,122 vs 511,325 in 2021); NOAA advises against splicing or directly comparing the two. The data come from the Open ENOW endpoint behind Digital Coast's Quick Report download. Each year's total was checked to equal the sum of the six sectors, and all 24 years match ENOW Explorer's Open ENOW view exactly. NOAA expects to update Open ENOW annually, and a new release can revise earlier years. Projection: none. CK Economics backtests a statistical projection of this series (exponential smoothing with a damped trend) by refitting it at past dates and scoring its forecasts against what happened. Its errors a year ahead were not at least 5% smaller than those of a no-change forecast, so no projection is shown.
Source
NOAA Office for Coastal Management, Economics: National Ocean Watch (ENOW), Open ENOW Estimates for California (state 06000), via Digital Coast: https://coast.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/data/enow.html — figures as published on 11 October 2026.
All data
| Period | Value | Change y/y |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 601,788 | −1.3% |
| 2023 | 609,794 | −0.3% |
| 2022 | 611,404 | +17.8% |
| 2021 | 519,122 | +6.9% |
| 2020 | 485,800 | −20.9% |
| 2019 | 614,413 | +1.4% |
| 2018 | 605,929 | +3.3% |
| 2017 | 586,739 | +1.2% |
| 2016 | 579,752 | +3.0% |
| 2015 | 562,839 | +4.5% |
| 2014 | 538,470 | +2.9% |
| 2013 | 523,453 | +2.1% |
| 2012 | 512,626 | +2.0% |
| 2011 | 502,550 | +0.1% |
| 2010 | 502,109 | −1.1% |
| 2009 | 507,654 | −4.5% |
| 2008 | 531,377 | +0.7% |
| 2007 | 527,480 | +3.1% |
| 2006 | 511,723 | +2.1% |
| 2005 | 501,185 | +1.6% |
| 2004 | 493,194 | +5.0% |
| 2003 | 469,692 | −0.3% |
| 2002 | 471,058 | −1.4% |
| 2001 | 477,600 | — |