- San Diego is the #2 greenest city in the U.S. (WalletHub, 2019)
- The San Diego region is home to 3,200 cleantech companies (Cleantech San Diego)
- San Diego’s cleantech sector supports more than 40,000 jobs and has an economic impact of $8.2 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 9,400 jobs in the solar industry (Cleantech San Diego) and consistently ranks top 2 in the nation for solar installations (Environment America, 2020)
- San Diego is the fourth most sustainable city in the U.S. (Rocket Homes, 2021)
- The Port of San Diego was one of the first ports in the nation to adopt a climate action plan (Cleantech San Diego)
- 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, and seven international ports of entry (San Diego’s Trade and Investment Initiative, 2021)
- $614.5 billion traded annually between U.S. and Mexico (United States Trade Representative, 2019)
- California exported $156.1 billion to 227 foreign economies (California Chamber of Commerce, 2020)
- San Diego and Baja California’s manufacturing supply chain co-produce more than $2.5 billion annually (Trade and Competitiveness in North America, 2019)
- San Diego is a top 10 services exporter among U.S. metros (San Diego’s Trade and Investment Initiative, 2021)
- $3 billion in foreign investment into San Diego (San Diego’s Trade and Investment Initiative, 2020)
- $22 billion in total exports from San Diego (San Diego’s Trade and Investment Initiative, 2020)
- $46 billion in total imports to San Diego (San Diego’s Trade and Investment Initiative, 2020)
- San Diego life sciences firms captured nearly three quarters of the estimated $3 billion in foreign investment injected into the regional economy last year (San Diego’s Trade and Investment Initiative, 2021)
- San Diego’s cyber cluster accounts for 24,349 local jobs across 874 firms (Cybersecurity in the San Diego Region, 2021)
- $3.5 billion total economic impact (Cybersecurity in the San Diego Region, 2021)
- San Diego-based NAVWAR set aside $1.6 billion for for private-industry Cyber contracts (Cybersecurity in the San Diego Region, 2021)
- Cyber-specific employment has grown 7.4 percent since 2018 (Cybersecurity in the San Diego Region, 2021)
- The San Diego region’s colleges and universities offer a collective 118 degree-track programs for occupations employing Cyber professionals (Cybersecurity in the San Diego Region, 2021)
- Nearly half of regional cybersecurity companies are doing business internationally (Cybersecurity in the San Diego Region, 2021)
- Largest concentration of military assets in the world (San Diego Military Economic Impact Study, 2019)
- The military’s economic impact on the San Diego Region continues to grow, responsible for $28 billion in direct spending to the region (San Diego Military Economic Impact Study, 2019)
- Responsible for 354,000 of the region’s total jobs in 2019, approximately 22 percent of all of the jobs in the County. (San Diego Military Economic Impact Study, 2019)
- 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)
- Nation’s largest military community (San Diego Military Economic Impact Study, 2020)
- MCAS Miramar is home to the Marine Corps’ first F-35C squadron (San Diego Military Economic Impact Study, 2020)
- $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)
- San Diego was a winner of The Center for Digital Government’s Digital Citities Survey (2019)
- San Diego has been given the What Works Cities Certification for our use of data and evidence to increase government efficiency (What Works Cities, 2020)
- #7 in the world for life sciences and biotech (Nature Index, 2019)
- Within the top 3 life science clusters in the U.S. (CBRE, 2020)
- The life sciences industry generates approximately $41 billion in economic activity and provides approximately 175,000 jobs (San Diego Union Tribune, 2020)
- LunaDNA named among top ten most innovative social good companies of 2020 for their work with DNA and genome sequencing. (Fast Company, 2020)
- San Diego’s life science workforce is among the largest and best paid in California (San Diego Union Tribune, 2020)
- University of California, San Diego Health is ranked #1 in San Diego and #9 in Pulminology, placing it among the nation’s best hospitals (UCSD Health, 2021)
- The aerospace industry in the San Diego region has an annual economic impact of nearly $30 billion (EMSI, 2021)
- In North County alone, the aerospace cluster generates 13,800 total jobs and an average of $1.6 billion in wages annually (EMSI, 2021)
- The industry has an annual economic impact of $1.8 billion in North County San Diego, taking into account direct, indirect, and induced effects (EMSI, 2021)
- 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)
- Scripps continues to be the world leader in climate change research (Cleantech San Diego, 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 ranked one of the top 3 healthiest cities in the U.S. (Advisory Board, 2020)
- San Diego is within the top 3 best cities for recreation in the U.S. (Wallet Hub, 2021)
- 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)
- San Diego ranks #5 in best cities to start a tech career (Learn to code with me, 2021)
- UC San Diego is the #2 highest applied-to university in the country, with 99,133 applicants, behind only UCLA. SDSU comes in at #10. (U.S. News & World Report, 2019)
- UC San Diego is ranked as one of the top 25 universities in the world (U.S. News & World Report, 2021)
- UC San Diego ranks in the top ten “The Best Public Universities in America” (Business Insider, 2020)
- 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)
- San Diego State University, UC San Diego, and University of San Diego all ranked within the best 385 colleges (The Princeton Review, 2021)
- 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)
- 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)