Among the 15 largest US metro areas, Riverside had the highest share of respondents facing key measures of financial stress. Almost half of households in Riverside, California, can’t afford usual expenses and about a third had trouble paying an energy bill in the last year, according to a Census Bureau survey.
Located about 50 miles east of Los Angeles, Riverside is at the heart of a warehousing-industry hub that boomed during the pandemic but has been showing signs of slowdown more recently. The metro area’s unemployment rate has jumped in the past two years to 5.5%, above the national average, and inflation there is also higher than the country’s average.
The picture is mixed across California. More than 85% of adults in San Francisco didn’t have an issue paying their energy bill, but more than a quarter said Los Angeles households couldn’t pay an energy bill in full during the previous year.