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As the Little Saigon community gathers to celebrate Tết, the Lunar New Year, we know a little bit more about its residents than before in its nearly 50 years.

Many of this year’s celebrations – Wednesday, Jan. 29, marks the new year when going by a lunar calendar – are also acknowledging a major milestone coming up later in 2025 for Orange County’s Vietnamese refugee population.

The 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, which prompted the exodus of hundreds of thousands of refugees, many who found a future home in Orange County, seeding Little Saigon, will be commemorated on April 30, but despite the community nearing nearly five decades, little of its demographics and economics has been officially studied. Until now.

Cal State Fullerton’s Wood Center for Economic Analysis and Forecasting released late last year an economic report offering some of the first scientifically collected data on what is Little Saigon, the largest community of Vietnamese living outside Vietnam.

As a second-generation business owner of the Advanced Beauty College in Little Saigon, Tam T. Nguyen, who helped lobby for the study, said he’s “seen the importance of data” over the years, especially as a leader with the Vietnamese American Chamber of Commerce approaching government agencies, nonprofits or corporations interested in Little Saigon.

They wanted to know about the community they might be supporting, and the data to back that up, he said. “Over the years I just kind of had to fudge it.”

The Cal State Fullerton Philanthropic Board of Governors funded the study – Nguyen is an alum of CSUF and the board – and the College of Business and Economics and Orange County Inland Empire Small Business Development Center Network based at the university helped support it, Nguyen said, as did the Vietnamese American Chamber of Commerce and the Small Business Diversity Network.

First was to recognize the growth of the Little Saigon community since it was made official in 1988 when Westminster officials passed Resolution 2661 establishing it as a 1.5-mile commercial stretch of Bolsa Avenue; later that year, then-Gov. George Deukmajian designated the neighborhood bounded by Euclid Street to the east, Magnolia Street to the west, Westminster Boulevard to the north and Bolsa Avenue to the south as Little Saigon.

But in the decades since, the community stretched out into Garden Grove and parts of Fountain Valley and Santa Ana – researchers looked at where Vietnamese make up more than 30% of the population, what would be typically considered an ethnic enclave. They are counting 41 contiguous census tracks in that area as “Little Saigon.”

“It has been a vigorous pace of growth for the community,” Anil Puri, economist and director of the Woods Center, said during a recent presentation of the report.

Vietnamese make up more than half of the population in 15 census tracks in the heart of Little Saigon and more than 70% in a core few.

In 1980, the Vietnamese population in Orange County was about 19,300 – the county had about 1.9 million residents at the time.

As of 2022, the county’s population tallied nearly 3.2 million, of which more than 215,500 were Vietnamese, and the Little Saigon population of nearly 230,000 people included nearly 100,000 Vietnamese.

“Vietnamese are becoming a larger proportion of Orange County’s population,” Puri said, but researchers are also seeing evidence of the population shifting to other parts of the county and more diversity within Little Saigon.

“Orange County today is different from the 1980s, it is a highly diverse community. Very rich cultural traditions and all kinds of communities live in Orange County,” Puri added. “And Little Saigon is actually leading that diversity. Being in the heart of Orange County, Little Saigon has driven that diversity to some extent.”

The median income in Little Saigon is less than in Orange County as a whole, and the poverty rate is greater.

The labor market is also somewhat weaker in Little Saigon than Orange County as a whole, Puri said, with slightly higher unemployment rates, though its older-skewing population, slightly higher rates of people with disabilities and the proportion of families that have younger children – likely leading to a parent staying home instead of working – would contribute to some of that difference.

Little Saigon’s rates of children who go to high school and college is greater than the rest of Orange County, though the community has fewer of its children going to preschool or kindergarten.

The community lags behind the county in the attainment of higher education, Puri said, but the college students coming out of Little Saigon are going into fields such as engineering and sciences that will serve them well.

“That is where the future, we think, of Little Saigon lies, ” he said. “These young people are going to start businesses. They are going to start high-quality businesses. … That is the path of future growth for Little Saigon.”

There were more than 11,000 businesses in Little Saigon as of 2023 and they employed nearly 50,000 people; health and social care is by far the largest industry type in the community, according to the CSUF report, followed by accommodation and food services and retail trade.

Little Saigon has more small businesses than the county at large. “The rate of growth of small business in Little Saigon is much higher,” Puri added. “So people are very entrepreneurial here. It is a young community in many ways, so the businesses haven’t grown into large businesses yet.”

While Little Saigon “has experienced significant economic changes and challenges, we expect that it will continue to grow and have significant opportunities for small businesses and entrepreneurs,” the researchers said in their report. “The Vietnamese community and Little Saigon in Orange County have consistently grown since the 1970s, and it is expected that it will continue to expand.”

Researchers also noted that where Little Saigon lags behind the county economically, tax incentives, grants and other programs could help attract more investment and close gaps.

“Small business growth, development, start-ups is happening at a much faster rate in Little Saigon than in Orange County as a whole. That shows you the entrepreneurial spirit and the vigor of the young people living in Little Saigon,” Puri added.

Mark Daniel, regional director for SBDC, pledged at the release event for the Little Saigon report some next steps, including to continue updating the economic profile, using this report as the baseline; conducting a small business survey to hear needs and to include Little Saigon in business roundtables.

And it will invest $250,000 in small business resources in the Little Saigon community in the next five years and build an SBDC presence in the community, he said.

“This report has been a huge milestone,” Nguyen said. “We have had so much momentum from this report since October.”

The four cities are planning follow-ups to continue the momentum to help small businesses, to get organized to apply to more grants and outside funding opportunities and create centers of excellence in the community, he said, adding the report has also helped get funding for public art projects as well.

“We’ve realized we’ve been able to get funding because of this report,” he said. “Because the organizations that are funding us now are reading this report and saying yes, this allows us to write the check now.”

There is a “tale of two Little Saigons,” Nguyen said as he wrapped up planning for a big Tết celebration the Advanced Beauty College was hosting Tuesday. “On the one hand we see the thriving, bustling Little Saigon of restaurants and businesses starting up and then on a secondary aspect we see the numbers and the data come out on how far behind Little Saigon is to the average Orange Countian.

“That’s the truth of it, numbers don’t lie,” he said. “Now we are able to with confidence say that Little Saigon has tremendous needs and it’s been a community that has been unseen, underserved and left behind in terms of granting, in terms of funds, in terms of resources. Little Saigon, with this report, is able to now apply to be at the table and compete for resources that are much needed.”