What are the ideas, perspectives, and trends shaping the global Impact of the Massachusetts Life Sciences industry? Is the Bay State’s slower-than-average bio-industry job growth on top of the list of challenges?
IIP > read on here > http://www.bioregionnews.com…
Despite facing a $1 billion, 10-year funding windfall from the Massachusetts state government, stakeholders in the state’s powerhouse biocluster must surmount a series of competitive hurdles over that coming decade if the sector is to remain competitive, according to a recent report…
Employment in the Massachusetts life sciences industry in 2006 grew 4.2 percent, or by 3,147 jobs, to 77,247 from 74,100 recorded the previous year. Between 2001 and 2006, the state’s life-science work force grew by 8 percent — no small feat in a state where overall employment declined by 2.5 percent during that same time frame.
The 8-percent life-science job growth was the same as California’s, and both states were slightly below the national life-science job average of increase of 8.3 percent. During 2006, Massachusetts led in the rate of life sciences job growth compared with California (2.4 percent) and the nation (2.2 percent), though California generated twice as many life-science jobs as Massachusetts that year, 6,364 compared with 3,169, respectively.
Job growth in Massachusetts’ “biotechnology” category, which includes pharmaceutical and biotech companies, jumped 28 percent between 2001 and 2006. Medical and testing lab jobs posted a 19-percent job gain, followed by teaching hospitals (16 percent), wholesale trade (12 percent), and two job-losing sectors, pharmaceutical (-3 percent) and medical device and equipment (-8 percent).
That’s just one of Massachusetts’ advantages cited in the Super Cluster report, which was released by the health policy think tank New England Healthcare Institute; the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, which is the state agency responsible for developing innovation industries; the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, which is the state agency that will oversee the life sciences initiative; and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
The state’s enviable set of strengths, according to the report, include a rising tide of venture capital investment in early-stage companies. Total private funding in state-based life-science companies rose 11 percent last year to $1.3 billion from $1.2 billion in 2006. In addition, the number of life-science companies winning VC funding rose last year to 133 companies from 108 in 2006, the report found.
But the stagnation of federal funding for research has taken its toll on Massachusetts. The state’s total in US National Institutes of Health grants dipped 4.3 percent between the federal fiscal years ended Sept. 30, 2005, and 2006, from nearly $2.3 billion to just over $2.2 billion.
Other challenges cited by the report include the need for stronger science and math education at the K-12 levels; the state’s high cost of living, including tax rates and housing costs; and growing competition from other nations for life-science employers and their jobs…