Knowledge-Intensive Industries Produce Nearly Quarter of U.S. GDP, Pay Higher Wages

Commercial knowledge and technology-intensive (KTI) industries produced nearly one-fourth of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) in 2012 ($3.8 trillion), according to a recently released National Science Foundation (NSF) Infobrief using Bureau of Economic Analysis and Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Nearly 90 percent of KTI GDP came from knowledge-intensive (KI) services industries that employed 18 million workers in the United States, while the high-technology (HT) manufacturing industries employed 2 million workers and produced 2 percent of the nation’s GDP in 2012, with both industries paying more than $20,000 higher than the private sector average. Although a considerably smaller portion of KTI, HT manufacturing industries have a greater concentration of workers in science and engineering occupations and perform a larger proportion of the nation’s research and development – the six HT manufacturing industries performed nearly one-half of U.S. business R&D.

Nearly half of the 20.2 million workers employed in knowledge and technology-intensive industries came from business services, with nearly half of that total employed across four advanced-technology industries: architectural and engineering, computer systems design, management and technical consulting, and scientific R&D.  Financial services employed 5.8 million people, with over 80% employed in the credit intermediation and insurance industries, while information services employed 2.7 million people. The largest high-technology manufacturing industry employers in 2012 were aircraft (0.5 million), semiconductors (0.4 million), and the testing, measuring, and control instruments (0.4) industries.

Read the Infobrief here…