The life sciences industry continues to grow at a steady pace in San Diego County and California, paying for hundreds of thousands of well-salaried jobs, but it may experience a slowdown in the next several years.

Those were major findings from a report issued Tuesday by Biocom, the San Diego-based trade association that represents life science interests statewide.

Employment in the life sciences — which includes biotechnology, biomedicine, medical devices and bio-renewables — has increased by 20 percent in San Diego County during the past five years, the report said. That translated to nearly 50,000 jobs in the region last year, according to Biocom.

Economic activity from the local life science sector amounted to $34 billion per year, the report said.


Statewide, the life science industry provided more than 360,000 jobs and almost $316 billion in annual economic activity.

The new analysis comes a month before the Biotechnology Industry Organization is slated to hold its annual convention at the downtown San Diego Convention Center. The group, the pre-eminent name in the biotech world, has staged its conference in San Diego in 2001, 2008 and 2014.

The BIO convention is estimated to draw more than 16,000 attendees, including investors, company executives, scientists and others involved in the industry. They are scheduled to be greeted by 1,800 exhibitors.

Life science companies, projects and employment have kept expanding at a predictable pace, said Joe Panetta, Biocom’s president and CEO.


“The industry is producing solid jobs and solid growth in annual wages,” Panetta said.

For perspective, Panetta compared the economic activity generated by the sector to that of another iconic California industry.

He said the life science community’s contribution in annual economic activity is five times that of the state’s wine industry, which generates about $60 billion annually.

Looking ahead, Biocom forecasts that employment growth in the life sciences could taper off during the next five years. This is largely due to the industry’s increasing reliance on “virtual” companies that have just a handful of workers, with non-core functions outsourced to service providers. While this arrangement reduces employment growth, it also enables those businesses to stretch their funding.


The industry’s economic performance of recent years has been helped by a sustained “window” of biotech or life science investment in San Diego County and beyond, said Bud Leedom, president of San Diego’s Leedom Asset Management.

That window has been open for at least six years, Leedom said, the longest time he’s ever seen it open. This window extends to certain other sectors, such as the financial technology market.

Continued good performance on Nasdaq is a key indicator because Nasdaq is “a barometer of risk-taking in the general market,” Leedom said.

For San Diego in particular, the life science sector has been a prolific creator of companies, he added. These span the range of technologies — from genetic engineering, to cell therapy, to DNA sequencing. A globally prominent example in that final category is genomic sequencing giant Illumina, which is San Diego County’s biggest life science company.


By contrast, the San Diego County telecom sector, epitomized by Qualcomm, hasn’t been as successful in producing high-value spinoffs, Leedom said. So the great majority of value in that industry is still accounted for by Qualcomm, which is by far San Diego’s most highly valued public company.

In terms of salaries for life science workers, the new Biocom report said the influx of billions of dollars in investment, plus federal research grants, underpins an industry that provides wages far above the average in San Diego and statewide.

The analysis looked at annual average San Diego County wages in five life science categories: $42,079 for bio-renewables; $101,309 for medical devices and diagnostic equipment; $117,893 for research and lab services; $125,317 for life science wholesale; and $150,853 for biopharmaceutical manufacturing.

By comparison, the county’s yearly average wage in all sectors is $57,454, the report said.


California has long been a powerhouse in the life sciences.

It received more than $3.6 billion in research grants from the National Institutes of Health, the country’s single biggest funder of biomedical research. Of that sum, $833 million went to universities, scientific institutes, medical researchers and others in San Diego County.

Nationally, the San Diego region ranks third or fourth among all life science clusters, depending on the year and the methodology used. The Boston and San Francisco Bay areas typically vie for first place, with New Jersey and San Diego immediately behind.


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