CBRE Report Identifies San Diego as a Top 8 U.S. Market for Life Sciences Talent

San Diego was named among the top 8 markets by CBRE in the annual U.S. Life Sciences Talent Trends report. The report maps the top U.S. markets and employment trends across the research & development (R&D), manufacturing and medical technology fields.

According to the CBRE report, San Diego's life sciences biopharma R&D subsector ranks seventh nationally with 17,240 employees,. San Diego ranks fourth among the Top 25 markets for the number of core life sciences R&D occupations and third among the density of core life science R&D occupations.

"The importance of San Diego in the life sciences industry is underscored by our capacity to host a similar amount of core life sciences researchers as the much larger markets do," said Ted Jacobs, vice chairman at CBRE. "Our market has evolved into a major player in the life science industry, and that translates to our universities, where they are offering more specialty degrees in their academic programs than graduates leaving with only general science degrees."

San Diego ranked sixth in the medtech subsector, which includes designing and producing medical devices. There were 20,310 jobs, led by electromechanical assemblers (5,790).

San Diego ranks eighth nationally in the life sciences manufacturing subsector, which includes drug manufacturing, with 15,410 jobs led by inspectors, testers, sorters, samplers and weighers (5,210) and biological technicians (2,700).

Supporting the long-term vibrancy of San Diego’s life sciences industry is its leading educational institutions, notably the University of California, San Diego, which underpins San Diego as a top 5 market for graduating new talent with expertise in the fields of cell-cellular biology and anatomical sciences and biological-biosystems engineering.

Overall, U.S. life sciences job growth has been sluggish since interest rates began rising in 2022. The industry’s job growth – specifically in biotechnology R&D and pharmaceutical/medicine manufacturing – amounted to 0.2% since June 2022 after gaining 15.8% in the same period prior to June 2022.

Even so, demand for life sciences talent is strong. Unemployment in the sector is below 2%, compared to roughly 4% for all professions. That’s despite an increase in U.S. biological and biomedical science graduates over the past decade, up 54% from the 2010-2011 academic year to 173,825 in 2021-2022.

CBRE assessed the top 100 largest life sciences labor markets in the U.S. across various criteria for each of the three specialties. Specifically for the R&D subsector, this evaluation encompassed factors such as the quantity and density of life science researchers, the number of recent graduates, particularly those with doctorate degrees in the field, the density of all doctorate degree holders and the concentration of jobs within the wider professional scientific and technical services sectors.

To read the full report, click here.