Federal Realty is proposing a 381,529-square-foot life science building on block 7A at Somerville's Assembly Row/Image courtesy of Jacobs

Greater Boston towers above the competition among U.S. metros in its lab development pipeline, while remaining the nation’s top talent cluster in the industry.

Two new commercial brokerage reports quantify the region’s continuing dominance in attracting funding for biotech companies’ expansion, developers’ confidence in the lab market and the role of the region’s higher education cluster in driving employment gains.

Boston’s 52 million-square-foot pipeline of proposed lab projects is more than three times higher than the second-ranked San Francisco Bay area, brokerage Colliers said in its life sciences spring report. Boston’s 9.4 million square feet of labs under construction also leads the nation.

Boston also topped rankings for venture capital funding with $17.2 billion in investment last year, compared with $14.2 billion in the San Francisco region, and tied New York with $3 billion in National Institutes of Health funding.

And it’s not just lab projects that are driving the development activity. Demand for biomanufacturing facilities is revitalizing commercial properties in suburban office parks and Gateway Cities. Projects are proposed or underway in Andover, Billerica, Burlington, Revere, Worcester and the state-run Devens business park, among others.

“Boston is a place where you can do your R&D, and it’s becoming a place where you can do your manufacturing and clinical trials,” said Jeffrey Myers, research director at Colliers in Boston. “It’s become a true agglomeration. Even beyond the biotech jobs, you have access to the venture capital sources, business services and manufacturing of equipment.”

Boston-Cambridge ranks first nationwide in the strength of its life science labor force, according to a report released Monday by CBRE.

The brokerage ranked metros based upon criteria including a number of life science-related degrees and the biotech industry’s share of the local job pool. Washington, D.C./Baltimore and San Francisco ranked second and third, respectively.

Greater Boston has the second-largest pool of people with biological and biomedical sciences doctorates, as the industry recorded a record job growth rate in 2021 nationwide.