SSTI Digest

The International Economic Development Council (IEDC), in partnership with six national and international associations and the U.S. Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration (EDA), announced the launch of the inaugural Economic Recovery Corps (ERC) program on May 11. The program will place up to 65 ERC Fellows within partnering organizations across the United States. The Fellows will engage in new economic development projects encouraging equitable and inclusive change. Each Fellow will stay at the host organization for 2.5 years. Organizations or communities ready to advance a local or regional economic development strategy or transformative project but have yet to find the resources to bridge the gap between planning and implementation should apply. Additionally, ERC is looking for partners that are “action-oriented and dedicated to building stronger, more resilient and reimagined local economies.”  The program is open to public and nonprofit community and economic development organizations, economic development organizations, Tribal Nations, economic development districts (EDDs), education institutions, and…

A recently formed coalition of national leaders from higher education, government, business, nonprofits, and the military have created the Council on Higher Education as a Strategic Asset(HESA). Inspired by the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB), the council will advance recommendations for changes in higher education institutions to enable them to prepare the workforce to support the United States’ most critical national priorities. HESA will create a strategy for this change and deliver it to the president of the United States and targeted members of the administration, select members of the U.S. Congress, state governors and legislators, and higher education governing boards and chief executive officers by June 2024. Three HESA co-chairs are leading this effort: Michael Crow, PhD, president of Arizona State University; Robert L. King, JD, interim president of Florida Institute of Technology and former assistant secretary for postsecondary education at the U.S. Department of Education; and Linda R. Gooden, chair of the University System of Maryland Board of Regents.  

An MOU between the Korean Institute for Advancement of Technology, the Korean Battery Industry Association, the Korean Electronics Technology Institute, and the NAATBatt Association, aims to bring Korean battery manufacturers to the U.S. NAATBatt, created in 2008 as an R&D consortium of companies to promote the manufacture of lithium-ion and other advanced batteries in the U.S., focuses on connecting foreign battery industry associations and supporting their members in establishing business relationships.  “Working together, through joint ventures, partnerships, and business relations between our members, is the only way we can achieve rapid speed to benefit,” said QAD’s Head of EV and Mobility Andreas Bareid, who serves as a co-chairman of the NAATBatt Onshoring Committee. “To further ensure the adoption of EV, it is critical for onshoring companies to establish production and produce the yield envisaged and required by the Inflation Reduction Act….” 

In anticipation of America's Seed Fund week on May 15-18, 2023, this article will explore the last 10 years of Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program award data. These data cover all 50 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico. SBIR is a highly competitive awards-based program that funds small businesses to support R&D projects with potential for commercialization. Eleven federal agencies participate in the SBIR program, each with varying budgets, requirements, and goals.

The Indiana General Assembly recently passed three bills that have the potential to impact the workforce in the state. Two bills address college affordability while the third exempts active-duty military from paying individual state income tax. House Bill 1449 will automatically enroll eligible students in a state program that offers 100% tuition coverage at public colleges, and Senate Bill 167 mandates high school students to complete and submit the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) to increase students applying for financial aid. Meanwhile, House Bill 1034, now signed into law, exempts active-duty military from paying individual income taxes starting with fiscal year 2024.

A recent study published in the Journal of Higher Education reveals that a college graduate’s mix of funding sources may reflect when they were born and how likely they were to obtain a graduate degree. A look at three cohorts of college graduates, those born in 1953-1962, 1963-1972, and 1973-1982 showed that the proportion of students who utilized one or two sources to fund their education decreased, while those who used three or more increased. Additionally, those in the most recent cohort who used more sources were found to be less likely to obtain a graduate degree compared to those who were fully funded by their families. The study’s authors, Byeongdon Oh and ChangHwan Kim, analyzed the association between students’ mix of undergraduate funding sources and graduate degree attainment using the 2013, 2015 and 2017 National Survey of College Graduates. They provide background gathered from previous research that documents the roles of different funding source in students’ educational outcomes, finding for example, that while family support is one of the most common funding sources, it does not necessarily lead to improvement in students’ grades, but is positively…

College earnings premiums appear to be declining for the first time in decades and the value proposition of college is beginning to fade in the eyes of many, according to the Harvard Workforce Almanac. As education costs continue to skyrocket and student debt mounts, Americans are reconsidering whether college is truly worth the expense. One means of addressing the issue is to provide data to better inform decision-making. Harvard Kenedy School has recently made available a new tool, the College-to-Jobs Map, to connect regional higher education and workforce data, allowing users to visualize the graduate supply and employment demand challenges facing their communities. The data can also highlight labor market gaps, enabling practitioners to better align curriculum with workforce needs. The College-to-Jobs Map combines public data with job postings data from Lightcast, a leading labor market analytics firm, to create a picture of the regional college-to-jobs ecosystem. It is part of the College-to-Jobs Initiative led by David Deming, professor of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, and Joseph B. Fuller, professor of management practice at Harvard Business…

Availability of a new data tool developed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) indicates that during the period surrounding the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was wide variation among the states on the ratio of unemployed persons per job opening.  Michigan peaked at 10.6 unemployed persons for each job opening, followed by Hawaii (10.3) and Nevada (10.2), far above most states, while others like D.C. (1.7) and Nebraska (2.1) and North Dakota (2.2) remained relatively unaffected. The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) program developed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is a monthly survey that collects data on job openings, hirings and separations both on a national and state-level. JOLTS’ “Unemployed persons per job opening ratio” metric measures the number of unemployed persons against the number of available jobs. A ratio of one indicates that there are exactly the same number of unemployed persons as open jobs, while a ratio above or below one indicates that the number of unemployed persons are higher (>1) or lower (<1) than the number of open jobs respectively. The first pandemic-related activity restrictions in the U.S…

A new fact sheet released today from the White House outlines three recent activities related to artificial intelligence. First, the National Science Foundation is announcing today its latest investments in National AI Research Institutes; the new $140 million across seven awardees brings the total number of institutes funded since 2020 to 25. Second, the administration is supporting an AI “red team” event at DEF CON 31 that intends to have thousands of hackers explore large language models from Google, Open AI, NVIDIA and others. Third, the Office of Management and Budget will release draft policy guidance on the use of AI systems by the federal government this summer. These announcements come as public attention to AI has increased substantially, reports of potential job losses are becoming more dire, and many people who already have or hope to someday make money on the technology want a “pause” on further development by current industry leaders.

A recent project from the National Bureau of Economic Research used data from the Annual Survey of Manufactures to study the characteristics and geography of investments in robots across U.S. manufacturing establishments and find whether it revealed any impact on the economy. The team found that robotics adoption and intensity is more closely related to the size of the establishment than it is to its age. The study presents results on the distribution of robots in U.S. manufacturing by establishment characteristics and geography using new establishment-level data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau’s Annual Survey of Manufacturers for reference year 2018. This is the first establishment-level analysis of the use of robots in U.S. manufacturing, leveraging data on approximately 35,000 establishments. Two thirds of the study’s sample size was from about 187,000 large manufacturing plants, and the remaining sample was a random selection of about 51,000 small manufacturing plants. The authors characterized establishments with robots along several dimensions and found that establishments with robots have more employees, lower earnings per worker, a higher share of…

Despite being hit with a recession brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, the latest 5-year impact report from Ben Franklin Technology Partners (BFTP) shows even higher growth than the previous five years. The most recent analysis, The Economic Impact of Ben Franklin Technology Partners, reveals that BFTP generated $400 million in tax receipts for the state and boosted Pennsylvania’s overall economy by $6.1 billion between 2017 and 2021, contributing to an overall boost of more than $30 billion since the program began more than 40 years ago. The BFTP impact study, conducted by KLIOS Consulting and Econsult Solutions Inc., also found that BFTP invested in 612 companies across the commonwealth and generated 5,874 jobs in client firms, plus an additional 10,132 spinoff positions for a total of 16,006 new Pennsylvania jobs. In partnership with the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development, Ben Franklin provides critical funding, business and technical expertise, and access to a network of valuable resources for early-stage and established companies. For additional information about Ben Franklin or for a full copy or summary…

SSTI’s TBED Community of Practice efforts to strengthen the capacity of EDA grantees recently entered a new phase with the launch of subcommunities focused on risk capital, lab-to-market, and entrepreneurship development. Each of these offers a chance for informal discussions on important issues facing participants. More than 200 individuals signed up to participate in at least one subcommunity.  Initial calls covered important topics for the tech-based economic development field: The Risk Capital subcommunity meeting included a discussion among venture development organizations and other economic development-related funds, of how they and their portfolio companies were affected by the fallout from the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and how that incident may affect their banking strategies and the advice provided to client companies going forward. The Lab-to-Market subcommunity heard from five state and university economic development professionals on the status of the commercialization ecosystems in their regions — Arkansas, Maryland, New Mexico, South Carolina, and Utah — followed by open discussion among attendees. The Entrepreneurship Development…