SSTI Digest

While the U.S. continues to lead the world in science, technology and innovation, other nations are on track to catch and surpass the lead the country currently holds, according to a new report from the Task Force on American Innovation (TFIA). In Second Place America? Increasing Challenges to U.S. Scientific Leadership, TFIA, a non-partisan alliance of leading American companies and business associations, research university associations, and scientific societies, benchmarks the U.S. against other nations in R&D investment, knowledge production, education, workforce and high-tech sectors of the economy. The report holds that to maintain a global leadership status, which it calls critical to national security and future economic growth and prosperity, a renewed national commitment to invest in key federal science agencies such as NSF, Department of Energy, Department of Defense, National Institutes of Health, NASA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology is necessary.

The Fung Institute at the University of California Berkeley, with funding support from the National Science Foundation, has established a website to serve as a centralized hub for finding research papers, analyses, and case studies on science and innovation policy. Papers to be included may develop models, analytical tools, data, and metrics to enable science and innovation policymakers and TBED practitioners to improve the impacts derived from public investments and policy interventions. 

Research papers are sorted by five categories: business, economics, policy, science, and technology. Site visitors also can find works by investigator, tags, affiliated organization, publication status, and key word.  Information for submitting materials to help populate the hub are available on the homepage of the site: https://sih.berkeley.edu/

More than one-in-five jobs across America’s metropolitan areas are defined as opportunity occupations, those that pay above the national annual median wage and are accessible to workers without a bachelor’s degree, according to new research from authors at the Federal Reserve Banks of Philadelphia and Cleveland.  In Opportunity Occupations Revisited: Exploring Employment for Sub-baccalaureate Workers Across Metro Areas and Over Time, authors Kyle Fee and Lisa Nelson from the Cleveland Fed and Keith Wardrip from the Philadelphia Fed reexamine findings from a 2015 study. This update offers an in-depth analysis of the largest metropolitan areas across the country, finding that a region’s occupational mix and cost of living play a significant role in determining their share of opportunity employment.

The Washington legislature passed a higher education bill that is awaiting the governor’s signature that would provide more aid for state residents attending higher education institutions in the state. The bill could raise nearly $1 billion over four years through an increase in the state’s business and occupation tax. The new legislation differs from other tuition assistance programs in states like New York or Tennessee in that it allows any qualifying state resident who does not already have a bachelor’s degree to earn something less than a full degree at a community college, allows students to go part-time, and covers apprenticeships.

Software plays an increasingly large role in private sector research and development (R&D) expenditures, according to new research from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). Based on a recent change in how the BEA treats software R&D in its calculations for gross domestic product (GDP) and other metrics, the analysis finds that the share of business R&D coming from software increased from 20 percent in 2006 to 32 percent in 2016, a 60 percent increase. The authors also look at longer-term trends in business R&D expenditures on software, as well as an analysis of software R&D in manufacturing and non-manufacturing industries.

Last week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo launched a new effort to streamline the state’s workforce development programs. The $175 million Workforce Development Initiative will consolidate the state’s fragmented workforce development funding opportunities. Using the state’s 10 regional economic development councils (REDC’s) to suggest and prioritize projects, the initiative will offer awards in three competitive categories: public-private partnerships that expand infrastructure and capacity for state universities to meet employer needs; programs to expand employer investment in workforce pipelines; and, workforce solutions that provide flexible funding for innovative workforce development projects such as those targeting advanced industries or underrepresented populations.

ESI ThoughtLab, a branch of economic consulting firm Econsult Solutions, has announced a new effort to study the return on investment of smart city programs across the world. Sponsored by groups like Accenture, General Motors, CBRE, and Oracle, the group is focusing on how the cities of the future can use sensors, data, and analysis to help fully realize the beenfits of working and living in a city. The new effort will be a follow-up to research released late last year by the group on building sustainable business and financing plans for smart cities. In Smarter Cities 2025, ESI ThoughtLab surveyed government leaders in 136 global cities, as well as 750 businesses and 2,000 citizens in 11 cities deemed representative of smart cities at large. They find that smart city investments have the potential to catalyze economic growth, although social and political challenges remain.

NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnership program is seeking participants for its second Policy Academy cohort designed to leverage manufacturing growth in your state. Funded by NIST MEP and organized by SSTI and the Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness (CREC), the Policy Academy will provide participants with an opportunity to collaborate with other states to identify best practices, partnerships, and policies that will strengthen their manufacturers.

As covered recently in the SSTI Weekly Digest, the IRS has released its second round of guidance related to Opportunity Zones. At the same time, the agency announced its intention to release a request for information (RFI) around program reporting. Days earlier, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released an RFI for ways to adjust programs to better-support the zones. Comments close on the IRS reporting RFI May 31, on the HUD policy RFI June 17, and on the IRS investment guidance July 1. Members interested in SSTI’s responses to the agencies should contact Jason Rittenberg (rittenberg@ssti.org | 614.901.1690).

Although emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and advanced robotics have the potential to drastically change the nature of work, recent research from the Aspen Institute suggests that policies for shared prosperity can help address the challenges and opportunities related to automation.

In Automation and a Changing Economy, the authors explore the impact of emerging technologies on workforce and economic security, as well as policies that address potential challenges and offer support for shared prosperity. From targeted interventions to systems-level changes to the social safety net, the report identifies 22 potential solutions meant to address four overarching objectives: encouraging employers to lead a human-centric approach to automation; enabling workers to access skills, training, good jobs, and new economic opportunities;  helping people and communities recover from displacements; and, understanding the impact of automation on the workforce. 

Many regional economic development strategies emphasize employment in manufacturing or high-tech, as these industries tend to provide well-paying jobs. Through an analysis of American Community Survey five-year data for 2013-2017, SSTI assessed state-level employment concentration within these sectors.

The portion of a state’s employment based high-tech sectors ranged from 3.8 percent to 13.6 percent (or 14.4 percent for D.C.), from 2013-2017 (see “methodology” for a detailed description of what industries are included). Nationally, approximately 8.2 percent of the public is employed in high-tech industries.

The distribution of states is slightly skewed, with 35 states below the national benchmark and 16 states (and D.C.) above 8.2 percent. Washington (13.6 percent), Massachusetts (13.1 percent), Virginia (12.3 percent), and Colorado (12.0 percent) are at the high end of the spectrum. The concentration of state employment share in the high-tech sector is visible in the map, below.

In the first quarter Manufacturers’ Outlook Survey for 2019, manufacturers continue to report a positive outlook for their own company and marked nine consecutive quarters of record optimism. However, their top concern remains the inability to attract and retain a quality workforce (71.3 percent cited the inability to attract skilled workers as their top challenge). The National Association of Manufacturers issued a report last month detailing the job openings in manufacturing, with the report’s author, Chad Moutray, calling the skills gap challenge “a full-blown workforce crisis.” In A Hiring Engine: A Breakdown of the Job Openings in Manufacturing, Moutray analyzes the employment trends in manufacturing, gives a sector-by-sector breakdown of recent job openings, identifies states where manufacturing jobs are located, and identifies the in-demand skills needed to fill them.