Moving to Riverside

Logistics, warehousing & freight

Amazon, Walmart, Target, FedEx and UPS distribution networks, March Inland Port, the 60/215/10 warehouse corridors

The Inland Empire is one of the largest industrial property markets in the world, built to absorb container traffic from Los Angeles and Long Beach and distribute it nationally. It is the region's largest employment category by a distance, it is where most entry-level and mid-skill hiring happens, and it is also the subject of the region's fiercest local politics over air quality, traffic and land use.

Higher education & research

the University of California, Riverside, California Baptist University, La Sierra University, Riverside City College

UCR is a large public research university with a School of Medicine established to serve this region, one of the world's most important citrus germplasm collections, and an entomology and plant science tradition that grew directly out of the citrus industry. It is one of the city's largest employers and the main reason a research-facing career is possible here at all.

Health care

Riverside University Health System, Kaiser Permanente Riverside, Riverside Community Hospital, Loma Linda University Health nearby, Inland Empire Health Plan

Riverside University Health System is the county's public hospital and clinic network, and IEHP — the region's public Medi-Cal plan — is itself a large local employer. Health care is the sector most likely to be hiring regardless of the freight cycle, and the region's long-standing shortage of physicians relative to population makes clinical roles unusually easy to fill from outside.

County & local government

the County of Riverside, the City of Riverside, Riverside Public Utilities, Riverside Unified School District, the courts

Riverside is the county seat of a county of about 2.5 million people, so the county itself is among the largest employers in the metro — public health, social services, the sheriff, the courts and the hospital system. Add the city, its own utility and the school districts and the public sector provides a large stable employment floor.

Defence, aviation & aerospace

March Air Reserve Base, March Inland Port, the tier-two supplier base across the Inland Empire

March Air Reserve Base south-east of the city is a joint reserve base and an air mobility hub, with a civilian cargo airport operating alongside it. Most direct roles need US citizenship and often a clearance, so treat this as context for the local economy rather than an accessible job market on arrival.

Advanced manufacturing & electronics

Bourns, Inc., Solar Turbines and the wider Inland Empire manufacturing base, food processing and beverage plants

Bourns is a global electronic components manufacturer founded in Riverside in 1947 and still headquartered here — a genuine engineering employer in a region better known for distribution. It is a reminder that the Inland Empire's industrial base is not only warehouses, though the warehouses are what everyone sees from the freeway.

Landmark · Downtown, Mission Inn Avenue

A full city block of Mission Revival architecture accumulated between 1876 and 1931 — flying buttresses, a rotunda, spiral staircases, catacombs, a Chinese pagoda and a chapel with a Tiffany window — still operating as a hotel.

Local tip: Walk in and look around; the lobby and courtyards are open. The Festival of Lights from the day after Thanksgiving through early January covers the building in millions of lights and is the city's single biggest annual event — go on a weeknight.

Nature · Immediately west of downtown

A granite hill rising straight out of the city with a paved switchback path to a summit cross and a stone bridge, free and open from dawn, with a view across the whole Inland Empire to the San Gabriels and San Jacintos.

Local tip: Go at sunrise or in the hour before sunset; there is no shade and the granite holds the heat. The Easter sunrise service at the summit has run since 1909 and is the oldest outdoor Easter service in the United States.

Culture · Southern Riverside, Dufferin Avenue

A working demonstration citrus grove preserved as a state park, telling the story of the industry that built this city — and a few miles away, at Magnolia and Arlington, the surviving 1873 Washington navel tree that essentially every California navel orange descends from.

Local tip: Visit the park in winter when the fruit is on the trees and the temperature is bearable. The parent tree itself is an unglamorous fenced corner of a road junction, which is somehow the right way to meet it.

Neighborhood · Central Riverside

A compact downtown of early-twentieth-century civic architecture around a pedestrianised Main Street — the restored Fox Theater, the Riverside Art Museum in a Julia Morgan building, and the Metropolitan Museum in the old post office.

Local tip: The Long Night of Arts and Innovation and the first-Thursday Arts Walk are when downtown is actually busy. Park once in a city garage and walk; everything worth seeing is within four blocks.

Nature · The eastern edge of the UC Riverside campus

Forty acres of hillside gardens on the campus's eastern boundary, running up into the Box Springs Mountains — arid and Mediterranean collections, a rose garden and four miles of trails, with no admission charge.

Local tip: Free and almost always quiet, which is the point. Go early in the morning between November and April; the collections are laid out on a slope and the hillside is punishing after ten in summer.

Food · East and south of downtown

Riverside's oldest Mexican-American neighbourhoods, settled by citrus workers and still the centre of the city's food — birria, carnitas, mariscos and bakeries that have been in the same families for generations.

Local tip: Casa Blanca and the Eastside are where locals eat rather than where visitors are sent. Go at weekends for birria in the morning, and treat the taco trucks on University and Magnolia as a serious option rather than a fallback.