By Mike Harris Tuesday, February 24th, 2026

Ventura County will continue to see anemic economic growth for the foreseeable future.

That’s according to the Center for Economic Research and Forecasting’s 2026 Ventura County outlook unveiled Feb. 24 at the Scherr Forum Theatre in downtown Thousand Oaks.

“There’s little change in the forecast from a year ago in that we’re anticipating anemic growth in Ventura County,” CERF’s executive director, Matthew Fienup, told the Business Times.

CERF is part of Thousand Oaks-based California Lutheran University.

“Positive growth, but very, very slow growth,” Fienup, who presented the three-year Ventura County outlook at the annual forecast event, said.

Perhaps the most important takeaway from the most recent year’s data is that the population and the number of jobs in Ventura County declined last year, Fienup said.

Highlights of the forecast include:

• The education and healthcare sector will continue to drive most of the job growth, implying a county-wide compositional effect of growth in relatively low-paying jobs, which also contributes to sluggish GDP growth.

• The lack of housing, combined with the dominance of growth in low-paying jobs, continues to generate domestic outflows of workers, households and companies from Ventura County.

• The domestic outflows imply weak population and GDP for the foreseeable future.

Even so, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis preliminary estimate of 2024 Ventura County real GDP is promising, according to the forecast written by CERF co-founder Dan Hamilton, the group’s director of economics.

If the 3.6% estimate “survives subsequent revisions, it implies strong growth for Ventura County in 2024, stronger than Southern California and the U.S.,” the forecast says.

Yet it’s based on incomplete data, the report cautions.

It’s also at odds with population, labor force, and jobs data, which show significant economic weakness, the report says.

Next year, the preliminary estimate of Ventura County’s 2024 GDP growth will be revised, and from an economic measurement perspective, it could either rise or fall, the forecast says.

“From an economic analysis perspective, using the population and jobs data described above to make an educated guess, the evidence is that it will be revised down,” the outlook says.

“Both the population and jobs growth rates in 2024 were relatively weak, at 0.1 percent and 0.7 percent, respectively,” it says.

According to the 2025 State of the Region report from the Ventura County Civic Alliance, the county’s GDP was $66 billion in 2023.

As it has for years, the forecast emphasizes Ventura County’s declining population, which peaked in 2016 at about 850,000 residents.

“Housing costs and a lack of socioeconomic opportunity are driving households and workers from Ventura County,” the report says.

Ventura County remains the second least affordable housing market in the country, according to the National Association of Realtors, Fienup noted in his presentation.

Median home prices in the county approach or exceed $900,000.

Those high prices are due to SOAR laws “that have created an extraordinary lack of developable land,” Fienup said.

SOAR – Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources — is a series of initiatives that require a vote of residents before agricultural land or open space areas can be rezoned.

“Population and economic growth are symbiotic — they influence each other in a positive way,” the forecast says.

“Higher economic growth is the most inclusive path to opportunity for less-fortunate households,” it says.

Last year’s estimate for 2024 population growth was revised from -0.3 to 0.1, a welcome improvement, the forecast says. However, this year’s initial estimate for 2025 is a disappointing contraction of 0.2 percent, according to the report. 

“These results imply that … the current 828,500 level is 3.6% lower than the 2016 level,” the forecast says.

If the reversal of growth in 2025 continues in 2026, the county’s number of households and workers will continue to drift lower, according to the outlook.

“Ventura County’s new population growth estimates portray ongoing economic malaise,” the forecast says.

Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the California Employment Development Department indicate very slow job growth in Ventura County, the report notes.

The preliminary 2025 job growth estimate is zero percent, markedly slower than the prior year, the forecast says.

While the total number of jobs in Ventura County in 2025 was higher than in 2007, this growth was driven by one particular sector — education and healthcare, according to the forecast.

If it were not for that one sector, Ventura County would have experienced peak jobs in 2007, the outlook says.

There were 340,317 total jobs in all sectors in the county in 2025.

The education and healthcare sector accounted for 59,908 of them, according to the forecast.

CERF proposes policies for the future, a comprehensive approach to all economically relevant drivers in Ventura County, including but not limited to:

• Land use (especially, expansion of urban boundaries) and housing development.

• An aggressive policy on retaining incumbent employers.

• A welcoming environment, from both regulatory and political perspectives, for companies and non-profits that desire to locate in the county.

• A welcoming environment for households who desire to locate in the county.

“CERF looks forward to engaging with county leaders in a thoughtful economic development strategy for Ventura County,” the forecast says.

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