- San Diego is the #2 greenest city in the U.S. (WalletHub, 2019)
- #4 of 50 metro cities on “U.S. Clean Tech Leadership Index” (Clean Edge, Metro Index, 2018)
- The San Diego region is home to 3,200 cleantech companies (Cleantech San Diego)
- San Diego’s cleantech sector supports more than 45,000 jobs and has an economic impact of $8 billion (Cleantech San Diego)
- The San Diego region has surpassed 38,000 electric vehicles on the road (SDG&E, 2019)
- The San Diego region is home to 11,306 jobs in the solar industry (Cleantech San Diego) and consistently ranks top 2 in the nation for solar installations (Environment America, 2018)
- San Diego is the fourth most sustainable city in the U.S. (Rocket Homes, 2021)
- Low carbon economy is a $3 billion industry, generated 10,000+ jobs in recent years
- To date, 35 energy startups have been accepted into the SCEIN program. Together, these companies employ more than 172 people and have raised $4.65 million of private funding and $2.2 million in public funding (Cleantech San Diego)
- The San Diego region is a Smart Cities Readiness Challenge award winner (Smart Cities Council, 2019)
- City of San Diego deployed world’s largest city-based Internet of Things platform using streetlights, which includes 14,000 energy efficiency retrofits, taxpayers saving $2.4 million annually and 4,200 sensors that enable larger deployment of smart cities applications (Cleantech San Diego)
- World’s first LEED Platinum commercial terminal (San Diego International Airport)
- Home to two international airports, including world’s first cross border airport terminal
- $1.5 billion traded daily between U.S. and Mexico (The Washington Post, 2018)
- San Diego and Baja California’s manufacturing supply chain co-produce more than $2.5 billion annually (Trade and Competitiveness in North America, 2018)
- Cali Baja’s foreign exports total $24.3 billion, of which $6.2 billion stays within the mega-region (Trade and Competitiveness in North America, 2018)
- Mexico is California’s largest export market, with annual exports totaling $26.8 billion. Trade with Mexico supports more than 566,000 jobs in California (Trade and Competitiveness in North America, 2018)
- Nearly $1 billion combined spent by U.S. and Mexico on renovations for San Ysidro/El Chaparral land crossing. (Smart Border Coalition, 2015)
- Since NAFTA was signed, California exports to Mexico have grown by 311 percent (Trade and Competitiveness in North America, 2018)
- Together, the mega-region’s manufacturing sector directly employs 418,300 workers (Trade and Competitiveness in North America, 2018)
- More than 51 percent of trade within Cali Baja is in the service sector. (Trade and Competitiveness in North America, 2018) These include:
- $7.6 million in computer systems design and related services
- $3.5 million in scientific and R&D services
- $2 million in software publishers
- More than 8,450 workers at 150+ cybersecurity companies (Cybersecurity in the San Diego Region, 2019)
- $2.2 billion total economic impact (Cybersecurity in the San Diego Region, 2019)
- San Diego-based NAVWAR employs roughly 40 percent of regional cybersecurity jobs (Cybersecurity in the San Diego Region, 2019)
- Regional cybersecurity jobs are growing faster than the overall regional employment increase of 3 percent; 11 percent increase from 2016. (Cybersecurity in the San Diego Region, 2019)
- Nearly half of regional cybersecurity companies are doing business internationally (Cybersecurity in the San Diego Region, 2019)
- Largest concentration of military assets in the world (San Diego Military Advisory Council’s 10th Annual Military Economic Impact Study, 2018); #2 largest recipient of defense procurement dollars in the country (Mapping San Diego’s Defense Ecosystem, 2018)
- More than 5,600 defense contractors collectively employ more than 62,000 people in San Diego (Mapping San Diego’s Defense Ecosystem, 2018)
- Defense contractor jobs have grown 6.3 percent over the last three years, and are expected to grow another 9.3 percent over the next year (Mapping San Diego’s Defense Ecosystem, 2018)
- In fiscal 2018, $28.1 billion in direct spending related to defense was sent to San Diego, (San Diego Military Advisory Council’s 10th Annual Military Economic Impact Study, 2018)
- Responsible for 354,000 of the region’s total jobs in 2018, approximately 22 percent of all of the jobs in the County. (San Diego Military Advisory Council’s 10th Annual Military Economic Impact Study, 2018)
- Contributed $51 billion to gross regional product (GRP), one fifth of San Diego’s overall GRP (San Diego Military Advisory Council’s 11th Annual Military Economic Impact Study, 2019)
- $118,900 average annual pay, one of the highest paying employment sectors, in the region for 2017 (Qualcomm’s Contribution to San Diego’s Economy, 2019)
- Qualcomm, the largest smartphone chipmaker in the world, has an economic impact of $4 billion annually and 10,030 local workers (Qualcomm’s Contribution to San Diego’s Economy, 2019)
- Qualcomm employs roughly 12 percent of the region’s total tech talent (Qualcomm’s Contribution to San Diego’s Economy, 2019)
- Qualcomm named no. 2 most innovative consumer electronics company in 2020 for their work on 5G. (Fast Company, 2020)
- #3 in the U.S. for life sciences and biotech (Jones Lang LaSalle, 2018)
- Boasts more than 1,300 life sciences companies and more than 80 research institutions (San Diego’s Precision Health Ecosystem, 2018)
- Home to Illumina, consistently ranked one of the world’s smartest companies (MIT Technology Review, 2017)
- Life sciences activity accounts for more than $14.2 billion in direct economic activity and more than $36.6 billion in total economic impact in San Diego (Research Institution Economic Impact Report, 2015)
- San Diego precision health companies secured more than $1.3 billion in venture capital in 2018. (San Diego’s Precision Health Ecosystem, 2018)
- San Diego precision health companies hold 825 registered trademarks, and 3,610 patents (San Diego’s Precision Health Ecosystem, 2018)
- San Diego is home to more than 350 precision health companies, 80 research institutions, 30 hospitals, and five universities. (San Diego’s Precision Health Ecosystem, 2018)
- Economic impact of precision health in California (2017): 29,000 direct jobs, 99,000 total impacted jobs, $17 billion direct economic impact (San Diego’s Precision Health Ecosystem, 2018)
- LunaDNA named among top ten most innovative social good companies of 2020 for their work with DNA and genome sequencing. (Fast Company, 2020)
Aerospace (All facts from The Changing Face of Aerospace in Southern California, 2016)
- The aerospace industry experienced 66.7 percent employment growth since 2004 in San Diego
- San Diego is home to 12,040 aerospace jobs – approximately 14 percent of Southern California’s aerospace industry
- With industry wages averaging $105,715 a year, aerospace workers are among the highest-paid in the SoCal region – almost twice the average pay of other industries
- The region’s scientific research and development cluster generates $14.4 billion in gross regional product (Research Institution Economic Impact Report, 2015)
- San Diego’s nonprofit research institutions have a $4.6 billion impact on the regional economy – four times the annual impact of the San Diego Convention Center, 34 times the impact of Comic-Con, and 33 times the impact of the U.S. Open Golf Championship (Research Institution Economic Impact Report, 2015)
- Independent research institutes in San Diego receive more NIH research funding and generate more patents than counterparts in any metro area of the U.S. (Research Institution Economic Impact Report, 2015)
- San Diego has more than 41.8 million square feet of lab and R&D space – more than 3 times the total shopping mall space in the region (Research Institution Economic Impact Report, 2015)
- UC San Diego ranked 9th among top biomedical research institutions in the world. (Nature Index, 2019)
- Small businesses represent 98 percent of San Diego firms (San Diego’s Small Business Ecosystem, 2018)
- Small businesses employ 697,000 workers and employ roughly 59 percent of the region’s workforce (San Diego’s Small Business Ecosystem, 2018)
- San Diego is home to 462 new innovation startups (Connect Innovation Report, 2017)
- Ranked #1 county in Southern California for patents granted and patent applications published (Connect Innovation Report, 2017)
- Ranked #4 in U.S. for thriving small businesses and startups (GoBankingRates, 2019)
- San Diego County startups received $3.47 billion in venture funding in 2019, with Biotech and Pharmaceutical startups taking 43% of the funding. (Connect Report, 2020)
- San Diego’s regional sports and active lifestyle industry employs 39,000+ direct employees (The Economic Impact of San Diego County’s Sports and Active Lifestyle Industry, 2018)
- San Diego’s regional sports and active lifestyle industry produced an economic impact of $6.3 billion in 2017 (The Economic Impact of San Diego County’s Sports and Active Lifestyle Industry, 2018)
- San Diego is the #1 city for expected tech job growth in the first half of 2018 (Robert Half Staffing, 2018)
- Software boasts a $12.2 billion total economic impact, with more than 100,000 jobs impacted (Software Development: driving San Diego’s tech ecosystem, 2016)
- One in six innovation economy jobs in San Diego are in software development (Software Development: driving San Diego’s tech ecosystem, 2016)
- $750 million in software-driven M&A deals in 2015 (Software Development: driving San Diego’s tech ecosystem, 2016)
- Two times as likely for a software developer to work in scientific R&D than the rest of California (Software Development: driving San Diego’s tech ecosystem, 2016)
- San Diego ranks #5 among nation’s innovation hotbeds (Case for Growth Cities, 2019)
- UC San Diego is the #2 highest applied-to university in the country, with 116,000 applicants, behind only UCLA. SDSU comes in at #9. (U.S. News & World Report, 2018)
- UC San Diego enrolls and graduates the highest portion of female STEM students of any school in the country. One in three female students at UC San Diego are STEM majors (BestColleges.com, 2016)
- UC San Diego ranks in the top ten “The Best Public Universities in America” (Business Insider, 2020)
- UC San Diego was the 3rd largest recipient of NIH grants in California, totaling more than $424 million (Connect Innovation Report, 2017)
- UC San Diego ranked #9 on list of “The Best Colleges for Your Money” (MONEY, 2019)
- UC San Diego, home to the Jacobs School of Engineering, is ranked among the top 10 engineering programs in the country, and some specialized programs – including Computer Science – rank in the top 10 worldwide (UCSD, 2019)
- UC San Diego ranked among the top 10 post-grad business schools in the nation according to 2021 U.S. News & World Report’s Best Graduate School Rankings (U.S. News, 2020)
- Among peer metros, San Diego ranks (Talent, Where San Diego Stands, 2016):
- 2nd – percent growth of degree-holding millennials (age 25-34)
- 1st – concentration of scientific R&D firms and employment
- 3rd – wages in sciences and engineering jobs
- 1st – lowest average commute times
- 2nd – average annual pay for R&D employees at $176,000
- 3rd – total number of scientific R&D firms
- San Diego State University has a $5.67 billion local economic impact (SDSU, 2017)
- UC San Diego has an $11.5 billion local economic impact (UCSD Economic Impact Report, 2019)
- Cal State San Marcos ranks #36 out of almost 1,500 schools measured in the 6th annual CollegeNET Social Mobility Index. (CollegeNET, 2019)