Economy of San Diego
[4] The economy of San Diego is influenced by its deepwater port, which includes the only major submarine and shipbuilding yards on the West Coast.
[5] Several major national defense contractors were started and are headquartered in San Diego, including General Atomics, Cubic, and NASSCO.
[6][7] San Diego hosts the largest naval fleet in the world:[8] In 2008 it was home to 53 ships, over 120 tenant commands, and more than 35,000 sailors, soldiers, Department of Defense civilian employees and contractors.
Each cruise ship call injects an estimated $2 million (from the purchase of food, fuel, supplies, and maintenance services, not counting the money spent by the tourists) into the local economy.
[24] Numerous cruise lines, including Carnival, Holland America, Celebrity, Crystal and Princess, operate out of San Diego.
San Diego's commercial port and its location on the Mexico–United States border make international trade an important factor in the city's economy.
This terminal has facilities for containers, bulk cargo, and refrigerated and frozen storage, so that it can handle the import and export of perishables (including 33 million bananas every month) as well as fertilizer, cement, forest products, and other commodities.
[39] According to the Center for American Entrepreneurship, San Diego was among the top ten cities for technology in 2016–2017, based on the number of local deals.
[42] That year, the San Diego life sciences industry employed 45,949 people, many of whom are clustered around the La Jolla and nearby Sorrento Valley areas, which are home to offices and research facilities for numerous biotechnology companies.
[43] Major biotechnology companies like Neurocrine Biosciences and Illumina are headquartered in San Diego, while many biotech and pharmaceutical companies, such as BD Biosciences, Biogen Idec, Integrated DNA Technologies, Merck, Pfizer, Élan, Celgene, and Vertex, have offices or research facilities in San Diego.
[44] Prior to 2006, San Diego experienced a dramatic growth of real estate prices, to the extent that the situation was sometimes described as a "housing affordability crisis".
A significant number of people moved to adjacent Riverside County, commuting daily from Temecula and Murrieta to jobs in San Diego.
[49] According to the city's 2017 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report,[50] the top employers in the city are: Historically tuna fishing and canning was one of San Diego's major industries,[51] and although the American tuna fishing fleet is no longer based in San Diego, seafood company Bumble Bee Foods is still headquartered there.
