SSTI Digest

While official results are still being certified, unofficial counts reveal a mixed bag on a slew of state ballot initiatives that could have an impact on innovation, education, state budgets and elections. Some gained favor with voters, like a battle over gig workers and how they are classified, which landed on the side of Uber and Lyft. The California Proposition 22 initiative won voter approval (58 percent) following a $200 million effort to defeat earlier legislation that provided employee-like protections for the app-based drivers. The approval allows the drivers to be classified as independent contractors and not employees, overriding Assembly Bill 5, and possibly chilling other states’ efforts to consider legislation that would have forced companies to treat freelancers as employees. Meanwhile, California’s Proposition 14, a bond measure that authorizes $5.5 billion in new funding for stem cell research for the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) that was created in 2004 after a $3 billion bond approval but ran out of unallocated funds last year, is currently narrowly passing with 51 percent of the vote, but its final fate is unknown. A…

After a historic election night, the winners of the gubernatorial elections in 11 states appear to have been chosen. Barring a dramatic swing in votes, all of the nine incumbent governors have been reelected to a second or third term. In Montana, Rep. Greg Gianforte (R) has flipped control of the governor’s seat, and in Utah, Spencer Cox (R) has defeated Chris Peterson (D). Many of the incumbent governors held strong approval ratings going into election night and won their voters’ approval for another term as the country tries to inch out of the pandemic and recover economically. SSTI previously reported each of the candidates’ innovation and technology-based economic development platforms prior to the election. What follows is a review of the unofficial election results from Tuesday night and a look and actions each governor may take in another term. Delaware Incumbent Gov. John Carney (D) is winning the Delaware gubernatorial election by a margin of 59.5-38.6 percent. During the campaign, Carney cited the creation of new grant programs, tax credits, and incentive programs designed to promote small business growth and encourage economic development. Carney has…

As of this writing, control of Congress remains officially undecided, although the end result will likely be status quo: Republican control of the Senate and Democratic control of the House. While the discourse and activity around major legislation may not change, there will be changes to the committees that most strongly impact science and small business legislation. The new members will not be determined until the next session, but multiple departures from these committees are already known. Senate Six Senators did not seek reelection, and three incumbents lost reelection, with both Georgia Senate seats appearing likely to head to a runoff (per New York Times as of Friday at noon). The most significant change among current science and small business committees is that Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) has lost his election and will not be returning as chair of the commerce subcommittee overseeing science legislation. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who is next in line, may prefer to maintain his chairmanship of the space subcommittee. Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) would be next in line to lead the science subcommittee, although his race has not yet been called. …

More special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) have been formed in 2020 than in the last several years combined. These entities have helped some high-profile unicorns go public recently, including DraftKings and Nikola Corp. PitchBook recently suggested, backed by several transactions involving electric vehicle companies, that SPACs may be well-suited to taking companies with relatively high product costs public. Here are five things for tech-based economic development practitioners to know about SPACs. 1. SPACs provide an alternative path to going public The primary purpose of a SPAC is to take a private company public through a merger, rather than through an initial public offering (IPO). A SPAC, commonly called a “blank-check” company, is essentially a publicly-listed fund established for the explicit purpose of acquiring a private company: through this acquisition, the private company becomes listed in the public market. 2. Exiting through a SPAC is likely easier than via IPO… Broadly speaking, the primary advantage to startups of exiting through a SPAC instead of an IPO is the ease of working with one partner instead of shopping the…

Nearly half of voters within battleground states have a deep level of trust in scientists, according to a recent study conducted by Third Way. This represents a significant increase from the 21 percent of voters who held scientists in high esteem in 2016, and is in line with Pew Research Center’s earlier report that found 39 percent of U.S. adults trust science and believe scientists act in the public’s best interest.

Apprenticeships, which will be celebrated during National Apprenticeship Week beginning Nov. 8, are receiving renewed attention and being highlighted as an avenue of economic mobility. Two recent reports highlight the opportunities of apprenticeships, the promise they hold for economic mobility, their expanding reach and a new effort in California to reach 500,000 apprenticeships by the year 2029. Growing out of a local initiative in central Kentucky, the Federation for Advanced Manufacturing Education (FAME) began as a way to build a talent pipeline among Toyota Motor North America and a few other firms and has now grown into a national model of employer-provided training through a network of nearly 400 companies in 13 states. A report from Opportunity America and the Brookings Institution examines the program from the perspective of its benefits for students and what exactly has made it work by examining the oldest and most developed state network – Kentucky FAME. Using data provided by the Kentucky Center for statistics (KYSTATS), the researchers found that FAME participants were much more likely to graduate from their program of study than students from…

In an effort to help Alabamians advance into higher-paying careers and understand how higher income from new careers can establish a path toward self-sufficiency, the state of Alabama and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta have partnered to launch a new career tool. The Dashboard for Alabamians to Visualize Income Determinations (DAVID) is designed to help low-income workers fearful of the benefits cliff (the sudden loss of public assistance as income increases) attain economic self-sufficiency as they plan for future career development. Gov. Kay Ivey said in a release that the tool will help Alabama reach its attainment goal of adding 500,000 credentialed workers to the workforce by 2025. The governor said Alabama is the first state to take a benefits cliff calculator and merge it with a workforce development career path planner. AlabamaWorks, the state’s workforce development system, outlines the ways in which the tool will help Alabamians. Through DAVID, individuals will be able to understand how much money they will gain through paid employment, map benefits cliffs for in-demand occupations, and visualize how their incomes will increase over time. A video demo of…

New analysis from the World Economic Forum (WEF) forecasts an 85 million global loss in jobs by the year 2025 due to pandemic-induced increase in technology adoption. While social distancing measures such as remote work have already brought many white collar workers into the “future of work,” the quickened pace of technology adoption and automation across all sectors will create greater employment challenges for lower paid and lower skilled workers. The WEF’s Future of Jobs Report 2020 also indicates that the jobs created to work with these new technologies could reach 97 million by 2025. However, business leaders and the public sector must take action to promote equitable workforce development and prepare all workers for the jobs of the future. While the bulk of the report takes a global perspective, the WEF also provides several country-specific profiles. The trends in the U.S. profile indicate that 57.6 percent of companies surveyed are accelerating the automation of tasks in response to the pandemic, and 91.5 percent are accelerating the digitization of work processes, while only 44.1 percent are implementing upskilling and reskilling programs. As companies increasingly rely on technology — and the use of technology — to complete essential business functions, displaced workers will face increasing demand for new, technology-based skills.

First-time beginning students looking to pursue post-secondary education tumbled this fall, showing a 16.1 percent decrease nationally when compared with last year’s figures, according to recently released data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. That decline was even worse at community colleges, down 22.7 percent compared to a 1.4 percent increase the previous year. All told, undergraduate enrollment is down 4.0 percent compared to the same time last year, while graduate enrollment saw a 2.7 percent increase, amounting to an overall college enrollment decrease of 3.0 percent as of Sept. 24. The decrease in enrollment continues a trend that was already evident prior to the pandemic in the U.S. The more surprising development may have been the drop in enrollment at the community college level, which typically increases during a recession. Similar patterns were evident in survey of enrollment managers and registrars by The Chronicle of Higher Education, which found that more than half of the two-year colleges reported that enrollments dropped by 10 percent or more. A story last month in the Washington Post noted that many community colleges…

In 2018, 5.8 million students at colleges and universities within the United States were either the children of first-generation immigrants or were immigrants themselves, which accounted for 28 percent of the total student population and was a noticeable increase from the 2.9 million enrolled in 2000. This data serves as the foundation of a new report from the Migration Policy Institute, Immigrant-Origin Students in U.S. Higher Education: A Data Profile, that explores the growing role first- and second-generation immigrants play within the nation’s higher education landscape. Within their study, Jeanne Batalova and Miriam Feldblum of the Migration Policy Institute explain that “the economic premium of higher education and life-long learning is likely to keep growing. The jobs of the future, shaped by automation, artificial intelligence, and other technological developments, will largely require a medium to high level of skills.” As the significance of higher education within the nation’s economy continues to grow, and the enrollment of first- and second-generation immigrants continues to grow along side it, the authors note that policymakers and higher-ed administrators…

The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) announced $43.3 million for 51 projects in the region’s coal-impacted communities. More than half of the awards will support recovery-to-work efforts or broadband initiatives. To date, ARC has awarded over $238 million and supported 293 projects. Funding for the awards is made available through the POWER (Partnerships for Opportunity and Workforce and Economic Revitalization) Initiative, an initiative that aims to help communities and regions that have been affected by job losses in coal mining, coal power plant operations, and coal-related supply chain industries due to the changing economics of America’s energy production. Among the recipients of the awards is Catalyst Connection, an SSTI member. Their grant will be used to fund the REAL Jobs in Energy & Manufacturing project which will coordinate new workforce development activities across a 12-county region in southwestern Pennsylvania. A full list of this year’s awardees is available here.

In Washington and Brussels, lawmakers are increasingly vocal about expanding the application of antitrust rules within the tech sector. Recent activity includes a report from Democrats on the House antitrust subcommittee, the Trump administration preparing an antitrust suit against Google, and the European Union (EU) considering new antitrust rules following billions of dollars in fines to major tech companies. While much of these actions’ coverage focuses on how changes would affect the companies that are being targeted by these efforts, the impacts would affect the entire tech sector.