San Diego employment was steady in the fourth quarter of 2025, up 1.4% compared to the same period of 2024, according to a report from the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation.
According to the EDC Quarterly Snapshot, there was a 6.6% growth in health care and social assistance jobs, but a 2.3% drop in professional and business services jobs.
“With each innovation job supporting two jobs elsewhere in the economy, challenges in these high-impact economic sectors threaten San Diego’s long-term competitiveness amid a year of heightened economic uncertainty,” the report stated.
“As a region with more than 160,000 jobs and $31 billion in economic impact tied to the life sciences industry, funding disruptions threaten to constrain future growth and competitiveness,” according to the report.
The EDC analyzes key economic indicators “to provide valuable insights important in understanding the region’s economy,” the organization said.
The 1.4% increase in employment during the 2025 final quarter “represented more than double the 0.57% growth we saw between the end of 2023 and 2024,” according to the EDC.
Also during the last quarter of 2025, “San Diego-based startups captured $759 million in VC funding across 36 deals, approximately half of the amount of funding seen in the same quarter last year,” according to the EDC.
Despite a 27% uptick in funding toward life sciences startups between the third and fourth quarters of 2025, “This small rebound didn’t offset the overall drop in life sciences VC funding, which was down 47% from 2024,” according to the report. “Additionally, newly (National Institutes of Health)- funded projects, key to driving long-term commercialization opportunities in the Life Sciences industry, fell from 402 in 2024 to 336 by the end of 2025, in addition to the many ongoing projects disrupted by proposed NIH funding cuts in 2025.
In the first quarter of 2026, while housing affordability “showed signs of relief and home price growth slowed at the end of 2025, San Diego’s overall cost of living challenges remains a crucial sticking point for economic growth in the year ahead, with the potential to be intensified by employment and investment declines,” according to the EDC.
The full report is at www.sandiegobusiness.org/about-the- region/#quarterly-snapshot
–City News Service
