Dive Brief:
- Employment in the life science inudstry in Massachusetts grew by 4.9% in 2014—the highest rate of growth since 2008.
- Almost half of the new life science jobs are in biotech, with a total tally of 29,897 new positions.
- New positions continue to grow in the life sciences industry in MA, with an average of more than 2,000 daily listings throughout 2015.
Dive Insight:
Based on MassBio's annual Industry Snapshot, which was made public Wednesday, the life science industry is robust and growing rapidly in Massachusetts. The sector grew to 60,459 new jobs in 2014—2,800 more jobs than in 2013. The overall economic impact of this growth is estimated to be $7.29 billion. But how did the state achieve this?
Yearly job growth in the life science industry has long been a hot topic in Massachusetts, since former Gov. Deval Patrick (D) enacted a $1 billion, 10-year plan to boost the life science/biotech sector—the Massachusetts Life Science Law.
When the law was annouced at BIO 2008 in San Francisco, Patrick and his team committed to bolstering the industry through the establishment of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, as well as large-scale capital funding of infrastructure projects.
The broad goal was to attract biotech companies, develop businesses from the ground up, capitalize on synergies between academia and the biotech sector, and support innovation. Moreover, the plan was to have every stage of the drug development process represented, from R&D, to manufacturing and commercialization.
It seems that Massachusetts has succeeded in it efforts, and is back on top again in terms of the concentration of life science jobs—and the state's reputation as a go-to hotspot for biotech companies.