By looking at Santa Clara’s demographics and trends you can trace its history over the recent years. The diverse, multicultural population, number of homes and school and college profiles show that Santa Clara has a majority of technology professionals, its schools produce a high number of engineers and home incomes are high.

Santa Clara has come a long way in a relatively short period of time. After World War II when the Cold War era began, Santa Clara became the new defense industry center. The valley saw the manufacturing of radio, radar, missiles and electric circuits grow rapidly, and soon replace agriculture as the primary industry. Stanford University became a hub for technology inventions. With the adoption of technology into corporate products and services, the demand for more sophisticated technology in all areas drove the transformation of Santa Clara to a technology leader quickly and decisively.

Santa Clara experienced a housing boom after World War II. The land was affordable so when veterans and their families came for job opportunities in the defense industry the demand for housing rose quickly. Agricultural tracts were soon converted by the City into single family ranch style homes. The population grew astronomically from 6,650 residents in 1940 to 58,850 in 1960. By its Sesquicentennial in 2002, Santa Clara had grown to a population of 104,300. 

Santa Clara’s total population in 2010 was 116,468, up from 102,361 in 2000. 45% of the population was white; 2.7% black of African-American; .5% Native American; 37.7% Asian; .6% Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander; 8.3% other races; and 5.3% Two or more races. 19.4% were Hispanic or Latino people. The population density was 6,327.3 people per square mile (2,443.0/km²).

Native born residents were 65% of the population with 35% foreign-born. Naturalized citizens made up 12.8% of the population, while 22% were non-citizens.

Men and women were represented equally with men in a slight majority at 50.5% of the population.

There were 113,272 people (97.3% of the population) living in households, 2,860 (2.5%) lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, and 336 (0.3%) were institutionalized.

There was a total of  43,021 households, out of which 14,477 (33.7%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 21,817 (50.7%) were opposite-sex married couples living together, 4,081 (9.5%) had a female householder with no husband present, 2,038 (4.7%) had a male householder with no wife present. There were 2,146 (5.0%) unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 312 (0.7%) same-sex married couples or partnerships. 10,906 households (25.4%) were made up of individuals and 2,945 (6.8%) had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average size of a household was 2.63. There was a total of 27,936 families (64.9% of all households) with the average family size being 3.18.

The median age of the population was 34.1 years. There were 24,774 people (21.3%) under the age of 18, 12,511 people (10.7%) aged 18 to 24, 41,876 people (36.0%) aged 25 to 44, 25,628 people (22.0%) aged 45 to 64, and 11,679 people (10.0%) who were 65 years of age or older. For every 100 females there were 102.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 100.9 males.

The 45,147 housing units had an average density of 2,452.7 per square mile (947.0/km²), of which 19,747 (45.9%) were owner-occupied, and 23,274 (54.1%) were occupied by renters. The homeowner vacancy rate was 1.3%; the rental vacancy rate was 4.6%. 53,694 people (46.1% of the population) lived in owner-occupied housing units and 59,578 people (51.2%) lived in rental housing units.

Santa Clara Demographics at a Glance

Sources: Census 2000 SF1, SF3, DP1-DP4, CTPP, Census 2010 DP-1