Highway 78, which runs through Carlsbad, San Marcos, and Escondido, has been called “The Hops Highway” by craft beer lovers due to the number of breweries in the area, but there’s more happening here than hops—the area is a tech cluster, too.

A new study shows that one-fifth of the county’s tech firms are located around the 78 corridor. A majority of them (80 percent) are small and have ten employees or less; the fastest-growing are in the biotech and medical device fields, followed by information and communications.

This sprawling section of North County has a big impact on the whole region: 25,000 jobs here are tech related, and these companies—including ViaSat, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Novo Engineering, and Ionis Pharmaceuticals—bring $6.1 billion to the economy every year (six times what Ballast Point sold for).

Source: San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation

Tags: Biotech, Innovation, North County, Tip Sheet