Military

Trends in Defense Spending Boost San Diego

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published July 29, 2009 at 6:48 AM PDT

This story was published more than 15 years ago.

A new analysis of military spending in San Diego suggests defense dollars account for a growing share of the local economy.

Economist Kelly Cunningham of the National University System Institute for Policy Research has tracked military spending in San Diego for years. He says the latest figures reverse a trend that began after the Vietnam War.

In the late 1960s, military payrolls accounted for almost 30 percent of San Diego’s salaries. Then defense jobs shrank as the rest of the economy grew. But since 2001, Kelly says, total military wages and salaries in San Diego have risen faster than salaries in other sectors.

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Kelly says San Diego has both a high military presence and lucrative defense contracts.

“We’re highest in military personnel,” he says, “and we’re fourth in total defense contracting.”

Those things combined make the County the biggest recipient of DoD money in the nation, receiving $13.7 billion in 2007.

Kelly says more than $2 billion of that pays for benefits and services for veterans. There are more than 100 thousand active duty Navy and Marines based in the county and more than 260,000 veterans living here.

Military

Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.