Fresno's surprising ranking was unveiled Monday in a six-month survey of California's high-tech industry by the American Electronics Association, the United States' largest high-tech trade group, with more than 1,500 members in California.  

The survey titled "California Cybercities" found that Fresno had 3,833 high-tech jobs in 1996, up from 2,488 in 1990. The average salary for these jobs in 1996 was $38,749, almost double the city's average private-sector job salary of $20,021.  

"In fact," an American Electronics Association summary stated, "Fresno is the only California cybercity that consistently added high-tech jobs to its economic base during the recession of the early 1990s."  

Granted, the nearly 4,000 jobs was only a small portion of California's 724,000 high-tech jobs in 1996. But an executive at AEA said Fresno's six-year growth rate reflects a trend that is likely to continue. 

AEA Senior Vice President Joseph Dooling noted that Fresno's high-tech job growth was particularly strong in communications equipment manufacturing and services. Despite recent bumps in the global economy, Dooling said, both sectors should remain high-growth areas. 

That can only be good news for a region trying to diversify its agriculture-dominated work force. 

"I think high-tech companies will get smart and start moving out to where the people are," Dooling said. "Cost of living is also becoming very important to these companies and their employees." 

Cost of living is perhaps the most dominant unspoken theme running throughout the AEA's survey. To no one's surprise, the survey found that the San Jose metropolitan area - Silicon Valley - employed 221,000 high-tech workers in 1996. Los Angeles was a distant second among California "cybercities" with 147,000 high-tech workers. 

Orange County (81,000), Oakland (53,000) and San Diego (52,000) completed the top five.  

Average salaries also were higher in these cities, topped by $72,000 in San Jose and $66,000 in San Francisco. The average salary among Northern California's 377,000 high-tech workers was $65,900.  

But the top three cities in percentage of high-tech job growth - Sacramento, Fresno and Vallejo-Napa - are in areas where an average 1,500-square-foot, three-bedroom house doesn't cost in the quarter-million-dollar range.  

The top executives at two local high-tech firms said the Fresno-Clovis area's modest cost of living, central location and generally good school districts will continue to make it a magnet for high-tech companies fleeing crowded bigger cities.  

R.A. "Bob" Berry is president of DPS Inc., which makes sophisticated warning systems for large firms such as telephone companies that need an uninterrupted supply of electronic data.  

DPS (Dependable Powerful Solutions) does about 80% of its business east of Kansas City, Mo., yet Berry is so committed to Fresno that he is building a $1.3 million facility near Fresno Yosemite International Airport.  

Word about Fresno-Clovis as a worthy high-tech site is slowly but surely spreading through the industry, Berry said. 

"I really think the job growth is going to continue," Berry said. "We're getting more response to the job ads we place, and a lot of it has to do with nonhigh-tech issues: cost of living, cost of homes, education."  

Philip Tarazi, president and chief executive officer of NetAsset, an Internet access provider, made a point of locating his company in downtown Fresno about two years ago because of the growth opportunities there.  

There is almost an inevitable logic to Fresno's high-tech growth, Tarazi said. The "big boys," as he calls them, naturally lay their foundations in major metropolitan areas such as the Bay Area and Southern California. Then they start looking at new markets nearby, searching both for customers and lower-cost sites for selected operations.  

"They have made their initial investments, and now they're moving to the Central Valley," Tarazi said. "I've heard a couple of high-tech industry people say the Central Valley has the best 2 million hidden people in the country."  

Berry and Tarazi emphasized that Fresno still has a lot of unfinished work before it can fully exploit its high-tech possibilities.  

The Valley's relatively cheap land is a big incentive for high- tech companies to locate here, Tarazi said. That means farmers, economic development officials and government leaders must work together on the delicate issue of land use, he said.  

Fresno needs better airline service, Berry said. It also needs to get rid of its inferiority complex. 

"There's still a self-image problem I have to fight whenever I have to recruit," Berry said. "If we were able to tout our advantages instead of  talking about our disadvantages, that would be a big help." 

Finally, Dooling said, competition for high-tech companies and their  jobs is intense among all California cities of significant size. He didn't  know for sure, Dooling said, but he assumes that Fresno's leaders -  government, education, business - have a coordinated plan to attract  high-tech firms.  

 "It helps when the community can band together," Dooling said.