SSTI Digest

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Loan Program Office (LPO) has announced a conditional loan commitment of $2 billion to Redwood Materials for the construction and expansion of a battery materials campus in McCarran, Nevada. If approved, the project would support production in a fully closed-loop lithium-ion battery manufacturing process by recycling end-of-life battery and production scrap and remanufacturing it.

The agency says this project would mark a step toward meeting the Biden administration’s target of making half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 zero-emissions vehicles, including battery electric, plug-in hybrid electric, or fuel cell electric vehicles.

In his budget proposal, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore proposed $10 million in funding for a new program that would provide grants of up to $2 million to defray specified costs associated with an eligible innovation infrastructure project; the projects are intended to support innovation in eligible technology sectors including advanced manufacturing; aerospace; agriculture; artificial intelligence; biotechnology; blue technology; cybersecurity; defense; energy and sustainability; life sciences; quantum; and sensor and robotics. The governor also proposed $1 million in new funding for the creation of the Maryland Equitech Growth Fund, which would use multiple investment vehicles including direct investments, grants, and loans leveraged with private capital to promote a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship and to meet the goals of promoting equitable economic development in Maryland’s advanced technology sectors.

Although men and whites still make up the largest share of the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) workforce, it has been gradually diversifying over the past 10 years, with increased representation of women and underrepresented minorities — that is, Hispanics or Latinos, Blacks or African Americans, and American Indians or Alaska Natives, according to the 2023 biennial report, Diversity and STEM: Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities, from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics.  The total STEM workforce grew 20% between 2011 and 2021, increasing from 29.0 million to 34.9 million workers. STEM workers as a percentage of the total workforce also increased, growing three percentage points from 21% in 2011 to 24% in 2021.

While fewer women than men work in STEM occupations, their share of the STEM workforce increased 31% from 9.4 million to 12.3 million, while the number of men increased 15% from 2011 to 2021.

The Biden administration this week took a significant step in its efforts to catalyze expansion and modernization of the U. S. semiconductor industry, with the announcement of how it will begin to deploy $50 billion of funding under the CHIPS and Science Act, with $39 billion of the funding intended for incentives for the construction, expansion, or modernization of commercial facilities for the front- and back-end fabrication of leading-edge, current-generation, and mature-node semiconductors, all with a goal of returning semiconductor manufacturing to the U.S.

In a statement last week, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo emphasized that the incentives are designed to spur private investment, leveraging the federal dollars by at least a 10:1 ratio, so applicants are strongly encouraged “to bring capital to the table.”

In a recent economic brief, Why Are Startups Important for the Economy?, the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond provides a comprehensive review of the current literature around startups, their impact on productivity and job creation rates, and their significance in the U.S. economy.  

The U.S. Department of Treasury has announced its approval of $801.4 million in SSBCI funding for eleven U.S. states and territories: Arkansas, Delaware, Guam, Kentucky, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, Tennessee, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. The addition of these states and territories means 46 states and three territories have been approved for State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI) funding. Treasury has now approved over $7 billion in SSBCI funding. This news comes alongside the upcoming two-year anniversary of the passage of the American Rescue Plan Act on March 11, 2021.

Arkansas

Differences in per capita innovation capacity between urban and rural regions are not as large as previously believed according to a recent working paper from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES). The study’s conclusions reduce the difference by a factor of three.

The researchers made modifications to earlier definitions of the “inventive class” to better distinguish occupations that are likely to contribute to innovation as measured by patent production. This new definition of the inventive class includes core occupations of science, engineering, and technology as identified by NSF, and also includes other occupations that have been shown in earlier work to be associated with patenting. The authors assert that most prior studies comparing regional invention capacity fail to consider differences in the composition of inventive populations in different regions. They make the case that the set of occupations associated with patenting in rural regions is different from the set of occupations associated with patenting in urban regions.

This article was edited on April 19th, 2023, to correct for an error in the original data analysis.

Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 saw higher education research and development (R&D) spending increase by a total of $3.43 billion (3.97%) over the prior year — a higher rate of growth than the 10-year average of +3.53% per year — and $23.99 billion (36.51%) over the past 10-years. Using data from the most recent release of the Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) survey, this article will analyze state-level trends on higher education R&D expenditures, revealing the aforementioned increased expenditures, although strong, are barely keeping pace with the nation’s overall economic growth.

This week, Rep. David Cicilline (RI) announced that he will resign his seat in the U.S. House, effective June 1, 2023, to become the president and CEO of the Rhode Island Foundation. Cicilline was a strong supporter of the Economic Development Administration’s Build to Scale program, speaking about the program on the floor of the House and co-leading "Dear Colleague" letters (with Rep. Randy Hultgren) requesting appropriations. He also spoke about the importance of Build to Scale specifically and regional innovation economies generally at SSTI’s 2017 Annual Conference. The Rhode Island Foundation is a community foundation that, according to its website, has been in existence for more than 100 years, focusing on economic security, educational success and healthy lives.

On average, Black households engaged in entrepreneurial activity have a higher rate of return on their business in comparison to Hispanic and white households, according to an Economic Commentary from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. Public policy encouraging and supporting minority entrepreneurship and innovation pays profits as well as social dividends, the study reveals.

The average yield of equity invested in a business, regardless of the household’s involvement in the business, is 5.6% for Black households, 4.6% for white households and 2.5% for Hispanic households. 

The 2020 pandemic was unique when it came to changes in the labor market. Unlike in previous recessions, most layoffs from the pandemic were temporary. While employment is back to pre-pandemic levels, the recovery has been uneven across states and industries, leaving some states still with a deficit while others have grown past 2019 levels. Utah, for example, according to an economic commentary by Martin DeLuca and Roberto Pinheiro of the Cleveland Fed, observed employment growth above 6% since 2019, while Vermont remains 6.5 percent below its 2019 average employment. Similarly, while services and sales occupations are down 6% and 7%, respectively, since 2019, the authors found that management and computer and engineering occupations are up 7% and 10%, respectively.

The NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP), a national public-private partnership initiative within the US. Department of Commerce dedicated to serving small and medium-sized manufacturers through 51 state centers, including Puerto Rico, recently released its Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 Client Impacts data following a survey of more than 9,000 manufacturing-related clients and businesses.  The MEP network reported assisting U.S. manufacturers in achieving the following: creating or retaining over 116,700 jobs; saving $2.5 billion in costs; generating $18.8 billion in new or retained sales; and, producing $6.4 billion in new client investments.