This article was produced by Capital & Main. It is published here with permission.
Growing up the child of farmworkers on the agricultural north end of California’s Imperial Valley, Fernanda Vega recalled constantly being told “to be someone, you have to leave the Valley.” So when she got the chance to attend college more than 500 miles away, she was excited to leave the sprawling alfalfa fields and desert clime behind.
“You leave the valley not wanting to come back, that’s your main goal,” Vega said.
Vega is far from the only young person to leave Imperial County — a blazing hot, largely rural area of 180,000 residents in the southeastern corner of California — for greener pastures. The county’s population of 22- to 24-year-olds dropped by 20.2% between 2014 and 2024 — nearly twice the statewide average, according to Census Bureau data analyzed by Capital & Main.
Local residents and officials like Priscilla Lopez, director of the Imperial County Workforce Development Board, say that youth exodus may largely be fueled by the region’s lack of employment opportunities. Imperial County has by far the highest unemployment rate of any county in California, at 18.9% in 2025. Between 2020 and 2024, unemployment for 16- to 24-year-olds was even higher at 26.4%.
Imperial Valley’s joblessness problem may actually be worse than the high unemployment rate would suggest. The U.S. Census does not count people who are out of school and not looking for work toward the unemployment rate. Between 2020 and 2024, only 41% of 16- to 24-year-olds in Imperial County were in the labor force at all, down 4.3 percentage points over the decade, the analysis of the Census American Survey data found.
That makes the region’s youth participation rate the second-lowest in the state, behind only Northern California’s Trinity County, whose population is less than 1/10th of Imperial’s.
“Time and time again, what we hear from our youth is, ‘If I want a good job, I need to leave the county,’ or ‘There’s nothing for me here,’” Lopez said.
* * *
For residents who do find work, Imperial Valley’s largest employers have long been in retail, agriculture, health care and government services. But a new industry has recently been trying to gain a foothold in the region following the 2023 U.S. Department of Energy confirmation of an enormous underground reservoir near the Salton Sea that contains one of the world’s largest deposits of lithium. The mineral is critical to the production of rechargeable batteries as the global economy transitions toward electric vehicles in response to climate change. State and local leaders have pitched transforming the region into a hub of green industry, with the economic benefits trickling down to its residents.
The allure of highly valuable resources has led industry figures and local officials to speculate that increased investment in the area will lead to more local employment opportunities. A RAND analysis sponsored by the county Board of Supervisors-appointed Workforce Development Board estimated that the proposed lithium extraction projects could create 700 permanent operations jobs and 1,000 construction jobs, making Lithium Valley “Imperial County’s largest jobs engine in decades.”
The Valle Unido coalition — a group of local advocates and community organizations such as Imperial Valley Equity and Justice (IVEJ) — has been working to secure Community Benefits Agreements with the companies behind proposed lithium extraction projects.
Vega, who unlike many of her peers, returned to Imperial Valley after college and who now works at IVEJ, argued that those legally binding agreements between project developers and community organizations will be necessary to ensure that local living and working conditions are prioritized over maximizing profit.
“Lithium Valley promises a lot of jobs, so what we are trying to do through our advocacy and our organizing is ensuring that those promises go through,” said Vega, who is now 26.
* * *
Those jobs may still be a long way away — if they ever come. Lithium extraction projects have repeatedly been delayed due to litigation from local groups and technological challenges. In August a state appeals court ruled that Imperial County had failed to address potential air quality impacts of the proposed Hell’s Kitchen lithium and geothermal project or show it had sufficient water from the drying Colorado River to sustain operations. Another recent obstacle came in the form of General Motors quietly abandoning its planned purchasing of lithium from the area, journalist Sammy Roth reported in Climate-Colored Goggles.
Those setbacks have frustrated residents like Efrain Silva, dean of Imperial Valley College’s Economic and Workforce Development Division. When excitement around the promise of Lithium Valley was first building in 2022, Silva collaborated with companies and the Workforce Development Board to develop the Lithium Industry Force Training (LIFT) program, designed to train students for the kinds of jobs that would need to be filled at lithium extraction plants.
“I thought that by now, five years later, we would be cranking out operators and technicians like crazy,” Silva said. Thanks to repeated delays though, he said, not a single graduate of the LIFT program has found employment in the lithium industry. Imperial Valley College has had to scale back the program from its planned three cohorts per track to just one, according to Silva.
Because some of the skills taught in the program are not exclusive to lithium extraction, graduates have found work in similar industries such as geothermal energy production. But even in these cases, Silva said some have had to leave Imperial Valley to find jobs.
* * *
24-year-old Jonathan Cervantes was watching alumni of his mechatronics engineering program in Mexicali struggle to find the kind of manufacturing jobs he was hoping to land once he too graduated. It was 2021, and he wanted to find employment near his family in Imperial Valley. But as the market for the career he was working toward grew increasingly bleak, he opted to end his studies and move north to the Coachella Valley, where his brother helped him get a job as a pool cleaner.
“I didn’t see growth [in Imperial Valley],” Cervantes said. “Unless you have some sort of acquaintance that can get you a foot in the door, you’re better off going somewhere else.”
Leaving Imperial Valley allowed Cervantes to do the kind of work he was more interested in, first becoming a production associate at a cannabis-beverage company before being offered a more senior role at a firm in Oklahoma.
* * *
For those who stay in Imperial Valley, the Workforce Development Board has developed other training and outreach programs designed to equip young people for job opportunities when they come up. But because job seekers far outnumber available jobs, finding work remains difficult.
When a new hotel opened near the City of Imperial in 2024 it was recruiting candidates for about 50 jobs, Lopez said. About 2,000 people applied for the open positions “in a span of about three days.”
Lopez said the board’s efforts would greatly benefit from additional resources, but if Republicans in Congress get their way, funding could be decimated instead.
Workforce development boards like Imperial’s, which is one of over 570 across the country, are primarily funded by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) Title I grants. In June, the Republican-controlled House Appropriations Committee approved a 2027 fiscal year bill that would slash Title I grants by 62% and entirely eliminate WIOA’s youth grants. The House of Representatives has until Dec. 11 to take a final vote on the cuts.
Imperial’s board has already seen its funding through next June cut by $130,000, Lopez said, which it has offset by shutting down a jobs center office and by reducing the amount spent on software and conferences. But additional cuts under consideration in Congress could tear away the majority of its future funding — leaving young people in the region in dire need of jobs with even less support than before.
* * *
Though the ability to make a living is high on the list of priorities for young people deciding whether to settle down locally, economic challenges aren’t the only factor driving the young out of Imperial Valley. It’s also host to other quality-of-life issues, such as high rates of asthma which are worsened by cross-border pollution and airborne dust from the shrinking Salton Sea.
Cervantes, who has asthma, recalled being able to see contamination in the air like a “gradient on the outskirts of town.” After moving away, he said he could stop taking the daily medication that kept his respiratory illness at bay.
Young people growing up in the valley complain that the lack of social and entertainment options doesn’t help, either.
“There just aren’t a lot of things for young people to do in the valley,” Vega said. “When folks are stuck within their parents’ homes with no job, no money, there’s no reason to stay here because there’s nothing that’s feeding their happiness.”
Imperial Valley locals looking for entertainment often cross the U.S.-Mexico border to Mexicali — a bustling metropolis of about 1.2 million people — to find a lively social scene, according to Vega. That’s why, in addition to advocating for job opportunities, IVEJ is also working to enliven the local culture by hosting art workshops supported by a state-funded grant from Arts in California Parks.
“Our arts program is something that’s really fundamental to how we’re organizing,” said 23-year-old Anahi Araiza, manager of policy and research at IVEJ. “Fostering the local art scene drives people back. It drives the ability for them to see a beautification of the Imperial Valley they grew up with.”
Araiza and Vega are optimistic that IVEJ’s programs can help push the Imperial Valley toward being a socially and financially fulfilling place where people can stay and thrive, instead of having to move away for a chance at a better life.
When he moved to Oklahoma, Cervantes often thought about Imperial Valley, about the family he’d left there and the long bike rides he used to take before dusk surrounded by miles of fields in every direction.
“I’ve traveled most of the United States,” Cervantes said while sitting at an El Centro cafe in September. “Best sunsets anywhere are here in the Imperial Valley.”
After five years away, Cervantes recently moved back to the valley after losing his job due to company restructuring. Cervantes, now 30, is unemployed and living at his childhood home with his single mother and brother. Like many others here, he’s having a hard time finding work.
He’s conflicted about whether he’d like to stay in Imperial Valley long term. He wants to stay near his family, but he’s concerned that the difficult job market will drive him out of the region again.
“It’s tough,” Cervantes said. “I’d like to stay in a different Imperial Valley. One where there’s more opportunity.”
Ben Poston contributed to this report.
Jeremy Lindenfeld reported this story as a California Local News Fellow.
Capital & Main is an award-winning nonprofit publication that reports from California on the most pressing economic, environmental and social issues of our time, including economic inequality, climate change, health care, threats to democracy, hate and extremism and immigration.
Copyright 2026 Capital & Main
