A report to be released today by the technology trade group, AeA, says that San Diego had California's second highest concentration of technology jobs per capita and led the state in the number of research-and-development and testing labs in 2004, its most recent data.

For every 1,000 people working in San Diego's private sector, 95 of them were employed by high-tech firms, according to the report, "California Cybercities 2006," which measured job statewide job trends between 1999 and 2004.

The AeA group, formerly known as American Electronics Association, ranked San Diego County fourth among all metropolitan areas in the number of technology jobs with 99,945 and an annual payroll of $8.5 billion. The San Jose/Silicon Valley area topped the list with 214,853 tech jobs, followed by Los Angeles with 165,729 and San Francisco-Oakland with 156,656.

While the study measured trends on the county level, Gary Knight of the North County Economic Development Council believes that North County cities are playing a growing role in the sector.

"I'd say that North County over the last 10 years has continually outperformed (the city of San Diego) in growth," Knight said. "San Marcos in the last three to four years has grown at a 20 percent clip, which is just phenomenal."

Recent completions of commercial business parks in Oceanside, Carlsbad and Escondido -- and commercial vacancy rates hovering between 3 percent to 6 percent -- signal that high-value businesses are moving north from the city, he said.

"General Atomics doubled its capacity down in Poway. Their unmanned probe has done so well in Iraq," he said.

And since 2004, population growth in Temecula and Murrieta is forcing employers to move their business operations closer to their employees, Knight said.

"The Del Mar electronics show every year has grown and grown because there's more work being done in San Diego, specifically North County," he said.

Tuesday's report measured 16 broadly defined technology sectors -- like Engineering Services, Electronics Components Manufacturing and R&D and Testing Labs. San Diego placed in the top five in all but two of the sectors. The R&D and testing labs category accounted for 25,200 jobs, and the region had a statewide high of 3,300 people employed in consumer electronics manufacturing.

Business professor Vish Krishnan said San Diego's strongest sectors are in radio frequency and wireless technology, developed by companies like Qualcomm in Sorrento Mesa and ViaSat in Carlsbad, and in biotechnology life sciences.

"Our life sciences by some measure has the largest concentration of scientists in the country," said Krishnan, who is a senior management professor at the University of California at San Diego.

Amylin Pharmaceuticals near La Jolla, for example, had two diabetes drugs approved in the last year, he said.

"I think there are some very encouraging signs, but we still need to do a much better job of working together across universities, as well as different departments of the same university, and the university and community."

A new push towards getting laboratory discoveries into the marketplace has attracted an unusually high number of MBA-candidates to UCSD who have research-oriented doctoral degrees, he said.

"They are smart PhDs who want to go beyond being bench scientists," said Krishnan.

While San Diego's employment in the high tech industry increased overall from 1999 to 2004, the area lost 1,300 technology jobs between 2003 to 2004.

According to the study, California lost 10,600 technology jobs between 2003 and 2004, and a total of 102,612 jobs between 1999 and 2004.

Stabauch Co. real estate professional Scot Ginsberg said he's notice an upswing in the number of technology companies looking for new space, which may indicate the market's upswing since 2004.

"I typically see them expanding anywhere from doing a lateral move … or expanding up to 30 to 40 percent. That's versus

'01, or '02, or '03, where 90 percent of them where downsizing," Ginsberg said.

"In the last 12 to 17 months, there has been a steady growth of companies," he said. "And I watch the venture capital markets. There's money flowing a lot more than in the dotbomb bust. It's more conservative growth."

The fastest growing technology hubs between 2003 and 2004 was Riverside/San Bernardino and Fresno, both of which grew by 4.7 percent. In five years those two regions' high-tech industries each have grown by 16 percent.

Contact staff writer Ned Randolph at (760) 740-5444 or email nrandolph@nctimes.com.