Occupations — Sebastian, Florida

Sebastian residents work mostly in management, business, science and arts occupations, which held 4,699 of the city's 10,255 employed residents in ACS 2020-2024, followed by sales and office jobs at 2,176 and service jobs at 1,756.

These counts describe people who live in Sebastian, wherever their job is: a Sebastian resident who drives to an office in Vero Beach or a plant in Brevard County is counted here as a Sebastian worker. The figures come from Census Bureau table S2401 for Sebastian city, and the column codes are labeled in the S2401 variable list. The civilian employed total of 10,255 carries a margin of error of 716. Jobs located inside the metro area, the unemployment rate and pay scales by occupation use other federal series and sit on the Sebastian workforce and wages-and-pay pages.

The arithmetic behind the leading share is 4,699 divided by 10,255, or 45.8 percent, for Sebastian; 26,645 divided by 66,572, or 40.0 percent, for Indian River County; and 4,168,499 divided by 10,484,998, or 39.8 percent, for Florida. The opposite end shows the sharpest gap. Production, transportation and material moving work, the factory, trucking and warehouse jobs, employs 654 Sebastian residents, 6.4 percent, against 9.2 percent of county workers and 10.6 percent statewide.

Among Sebastian's detailed occupation lines, management occupations lead with 1,154 residents, just ahead of office and administrative support at 1,118 and sales at 1,058, with healthcare practitioners and technicians fourth at 927.

Small lines carry wide error bands in a city of Sebastian's size. The Sebastian S2401 table gives building and grounds work 695 residents with a margin of 269, and installation, maintenance and repair 522 with a margin of 301, so the order of the middle rows can shift from one release to the next. The top four rows are each above 900 and hold together better.

Within the computer, engineering and science line, Sebastian has 358 residents in computer and mathematical jobs, 287 in architecture and engineering and 234 in life, physical and social science. Health work is split between 501 diagnosing and treating practitioners and 426 health technologists and technicians. Lawyers and other legal occupations are rare, at 67 residents, compared with 1,054 across Indian River County as a whole.

The number of Sebastian residents in management, business, science and arts jobs grew from 2,933 in ACS 2015-2019 to 4,699 in ACS 2020-2024, a rise large enough to clear the survey's error margins.

The ACS 2015-2019 table for Sebastian put the management group at 2,933 with a margin of 372, a range of 2,561 to 3,305. The 2020-2024 table gives 4,699 with a margin of 748, a range of 3,951 to 5,447. Because the two ranges do not meet, the gain of 1,766 (4,699 minus 2,933) is larger than sampling error. That single group accounts for more than the whole rise in Sebastian employment, which was 1,245 residents (10,255 minus 9,010).

The decline in production, transportation and material moving is less certain. It fell from 1,138 to 654 Sebastian residents, but the ranges of 819 to 1,457 and 414 to 894 overlap, so the survey cannot rule out a smaller change. Service, sales and office, and the construction group moved by fewer than 110 residents each, well inside their margins.

Men make up 55.9 percent of Sebastian's employed residents, more than in Indian River County at 50.8 percent, and the city's occupations split sharply by sex in health care, office work and the building trades.

The Sebastian S2401 table counts 5,732 employed men and 4,523 employed women. Women hold 78.1 percent of healthcare practitioner and technical jobs held by Sebastian residents and 86.0 percent of office and administrative support jobs. The county table shows the same direction with smaller margins: 77.8 percent of county healthcare practitioners and 80.7 percent of office support workers are women.

Two Sebastian cells look extreme and reflect a small sample. The survey found no women among the 970 Sebastian residents in natural resources, construction and maintenance, so the table reports 100.0 percent men, while the county figure is 92.4 percent men and the Florida figure 94.3 percent. Women are 32.1 percent of the Sebastian production and transportation group, well above the county's 19.2 percent, but that group has only 654 residents in all. Service work in Sebastian is majority male, 58.2 percent, the reverse of the county and state pattern.

The median Sebastian worker with earnings made $46,203 in ACS 2020-2024, against $42,857 in Indian River County and $44,337 in Florida, but the city figure's margin of $6,480 means the three cannot be ranked.

Service work pays least everywhere. The Sebastian S2411 table puts the service median at $20,592 with a margin of $2,601, a range that reaches no higher than $23,193 and so sits below the Florida service median of $28,167. The gap with the county's $25,818 is not firm, because the county range starts at $22,088. Management, business, science and arts jobs pay Sebastian residents a median of $60,906, close to the county's $61,718.

The building trades and the production group show high Sebastian medians, $51,471 and $48,516, but each has a margin above $15,000 (15,770 and 15,637), so neither can be called higher than the county. Across all occupations, employed Sebastian women had a median of $48,433 and men $43,157, which the survey reports as women earning 112.2 percent of men's pay. The two margins, $5,594 and $8,833, overlap, so the city's apparent reversal of the usual gap is not statistically clear; the county ratio is 82.9 percent and Florida's 78.9 percent.

An older figure shows the direction of travel. The ACS 2015-2019 table for Sebastian gave a median of $30,305, in 2019 dollars, and the 2020-2024 median of $46,203 is stated in 2024 dollars. Dividing the two gives 1.52, but part of that rise is inflation between the two dollar years, so the comparison is not a measure of real pay growth.

By industry, the largest employer of Sebastian residents is educational services, health care and social assistance, with 2,233 of the city's 10,255 employed residents, or 21.8 percent, in ACS 2020-2024.

Occupation describes the work a person does; industry describes the business that employs them, so a Sebastian bookkeeper at a hospital counts in office support by occupation and in health care by industry. The Census Bureau industry table S2403 for Sebastian splits the leading sector into 1,258 residents in health care and social assistance and 975 in educational services. Professional, scientific, management, administrative and waste services follow with 1,596, retail trade with 977, and the arts, recreation, lodging and food services sector with 839. Labels for the industry codes are in the S2403 variable list.

The resident count is not the same as the number of jobs located in Sebastian or along the US 1 corridor. Federal job counts for the Sebastian-Vero Beach metro area appear on the Sebastian workforce page instead. Median earnings by occupation are labeled in the S2411 variable list. Last verified: October 12, 2026, against Census Bureau tables S2401, S2411 and S2403 for Sebastian city, Indian River County and Florida.