Health-care technology has emerged as one of the largest employers in California, surpassing such longtime job providers as aerospace and the movie industry, according to a report scheduled for release next week.
The survey by the California Healthcare Institute, a trade and lobbying group, found that the health technology industry employs 210,000 workers in California, which can now boast having the highest concentration of biomedical firms anywhere in the world. Only the state's electronic equipment manufacturers account for more jobs.
"Since we released our first report in 1993, the industry has really come of age," said David L. Gollaher, the institute's president. "The industry now in terms of sheer number of employees, wages, and exports has taken its place as a linchpin of the 21st-century economy."
The report said one-third of the nation's biotechnology companies and 28% of high-tech medical device and diagnostics companies are in California.
The statistics show the power of California--with its strong biological research base in universities and private laboratories--to attract an industry that depends on the highest level of experimental science, said Edward Penhoet, the institute's chairman and vice chairman of Chiron Corp. in Emeryville, one of the biotechnology giants.
"This is a major shift in the industry, which used to be largely on the East Coast," said Penhoet, who recently became dean of the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. "Clearly the momentum is for California now, and the magnet is the high-quality research here at the universities."
The institute used government wage and employment statistics and a survey of California companies conducted by KPMG Peat Marwick to take a snapshot of the industry and illustrate its growing impact on the state's economy. Included in the employment figures were about 44,000 people working in university and private research labs. The institute defined health-care technology as biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, diagnostic testing, laboratory services and biomedical sales.
Just how fast the industry is growing is impossible to determine from the statistics. Two years ago, when the institute last surveyed the industry, it estimated total employment in the state at 165,000--but that did not include workers involved in sales of biomedical supplies. This group accounted for 41,100 in the current survey.
