Useful Stats

Just 19% of the approximately 25,000 census tracts potentially eligible for Opportunity Zone (OZ) designation are “More likely to attract OZ investment, with larger impact,” per the Urban Institute’s new OZ Designation Tool.¹ The majority (68%) of potentially eligible tracts were found to be “Less likely to attract OZ investment,” while the remaining 13% were determined likely to attract capital regardless of OZ designation. Breaking the data down further, this article showcases state-level aggregations of the percentage of potentially eligible tracts across each categorization to paint a picture of which states stand to benefit the most from the OZ program based on the count of tracts likely to receive investments.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury) recently issued three new FAQs for the State Small Business Credit Initiative 2.0 (SSBCI) program. These FAQs clarify and reiterate the timeline for the end of the Capital Program, and the deadlines by which participating jurisdictions must request disbursement of any remaining allocated Capital Program funds.

In summary:

• All disbursement, technical support, and other program actions performed by Treasury will cease on March 11, 2028 (FAQ #8 in the general section).  
• All Capital Program disbursement requests must be submitted to Treasury by December 31, 2027 (FAQ #4 under Section III.b)
• Treasury expects to terminate disbursements to jurisdictions that have not qualified for their second tranche disbursement by their three-year anniversaries (FAQ #1 in Section III.c)

SSTI has confirmed with the SSBCI team at Treasury that no states have failed to meet their three-year deadline, although we recognize this to be an ongoing concern as some jurisdictions’ allocation agreement dates are as recent as mid-2024.

With federal R&D investments unlikely to keep pace with inflation or international competition based on the administration’s budget request, cuts to existing research grants, and Congress’s inability to pass a budget, business R&D investments become more critical for sustaining the competitiveness of regional innovation economies. Trends evident in new data released by the National Science Foundation point to areas of potential concern or need for state TBED policy attention and potential adjustment: business R&D is growing even more concentrated geographically, and for many areas of the country business investments likely are not growing at a sufficient pace to maintain the regions’ innovation capacity. 

From 2022 to 2023, domestic R&D expenditures increased 4%, or $29 billion, but remained nearly unchanged when adjusted for inflation. This apparent slowdown follows a streak averaging nearly 12% ($59 billion) year-over-year growth from 2018 to 2022, and 8% over the past decade from 2014 to 2023. Adjusting for inflation paints a different picture of the growth trends, with a more modest annual average of 8% from 2018 to 2022 and 6% over the past decade. In this edition of Useful Stats, SSTI uses new Business Enterprise R&D (BERD) survey data to explore business R&D expenditures since 2009. Then, we present the data by sector and industry, allowing for closer analysis of which business R&D see the most investment in the U.S. 

Refer to the Data Notes section at the end of this article for more details on the data and its limitations. 

The U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury) recently released a report on the State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI) program with data through December 31, 2024. As of the end of 2024, Treasury has disbursed nearly $4 billion of the $10 billion set aside for the program in the 2021 American Rescue Plan of Act. 

In terms of the three-tranche, formula-based allocation structure of the SSBCI program, the report documents the first disbursement to 130 jurisdictions, the second for 20, and the third, or final, tranche for six.

Within this article, SSTI provides two data visualizations to graphically compare states and their progress with accessing SSBCI funds. 

The graphics below include data for only the 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, and not Tribal governments.

Exploring gross domestic product (GDP) at the county level offers a more detailed look at where industries are located and how they shape local economies, especially in smaller or more rural counties often overlooked at higher geographic levels. SSTI has provided similar analyses at the state and metropolitan levels, yet county-level data can reveal micro-level trends, showing local patterns that broader numbers might hide. Such refined looks can help TBED and innovation policy approaches to be more surgical in their application.

To help guide that refinement, this edition of Useful Stats uses Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) data to map and illustrate differences in county-level GDP broken down by private industries.

In a country marked by regional diversity, gaining insights into economic performance often means looking beyond conventional state and county boundaries to economic hubs. This edition of Useful Stats uses Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) data to first compare U.S. metropolitan and micropolitan GDPs broken down by industry for the last 20+ years, then consider each Metropolitan Statistical Area’s GDP by private industry, highlighting patterns and changes over the past decades.  

Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs), as defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), “have at least one urban area of 50,000 or more population plus adjacent territory that has a high degree of social and economic integration with the core urban area as measured by commuting ties.” Approximately 86% of the nation's population resides within the 392 MSAs in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.[1]

Overall U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) has steadily increased over the past decade. However, the growth in the sectors which drive it has been uneven. Data from 2014 through 2023 reveals that sectoral contributions to private industry GDP have shifted from manufacturing (down 1.57 percentage points since 2014) and mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction (down 1.05), to professional and business services (up 0.85) and construction (up 0.72). Differences in the sectoral makeup of private industry GDP at the state level show that most states share similar primary sectors but vastly different second-largest sectors. Significant changes in federal policy may affect GDP composition going forward. 

All data used in this article comes from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis’ (BEA) GDP and Personal Income tables. Data used for GDP is in millions of current, not adjusted for inflation, USD, and is for private industries. All sectors and industries referenced are based on the 2017 North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) used by the BEA.

Higher education R&D (HERD) expenditures have steadily increased over time. They’ve soared past $100 billion in the most recent data year, fiscal year (FY) 2023, growing in every state. However, the gains are not shared equally in all fields of research.

SSTI analyzed HERD Survey data, finding that in the 10 FYs since 2013, science R&D fields, led by the life sciences, were responsible for the largest dollar growths. In contrast, non-S&E fields, led by education, experienced the largest relative growth. SSTI has examined these shifts over the past decade at the national level and broken down expenditures by R&D field at the state and institutional level for FY 2023. This edition of Useful Stats provides the resulting comprehensive picture of HERD expenditures by R&D field.

The Feb. 7, 2025, memo from the NIH Office of the Director (NOT-OD-25-068), now on hold because of two federal judge actions, announced the implementation of a flat 15% Facilities and Administrative fee (F&A) “across all NIH grants.” While the historic average F&A, or indirect cost rate, paid for by NIH is between 27 and 28%, the memo stated, the agency has previously allowed private small businesses without a negotiated F&A rate to charge up to 40% on their SBIR/STTR awards without further justification, drastically lowering their administrative burdens. Thus, a flat 15% fee on F&A if ever implemented would likely lead to some hardship for the small businesses.

Readers may have noticed the most populous states end up topping many of the statistical tables related to economic development. Normalizing the data by some relevant, related measure can provide a higher quality look that is a little closer to the “apples to apples” appeal that might help influence some policy issues. For this week’s edition of Useful Stats, SSTI is exploring research intensity as a component of state gross domestic product (GDP) and the research load “carried” by each member of the R&D personnel within the state’s higher education community.

HERD and GDP

Higher education R&D (HERD) intensity as it relates to GDP, calculated as HERD expenditures as a percentage of total GDP, indicates the relative importance of R&D spending by colleges and universities to their regional economies and varies greatly across the U.S. Note that HERD survey data is released by Fiscal Year (FY), while GDP data, drawn from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), is released by calendar year.

SSTI’s new analysis of NIH data reveals the agency’s external R&D spending per award has been essentially treading water for the past 25 years in terms of real dollars—rising just 4% since FY 2000 when adjusted for inflation. This slow growth comes despite the crucial role NIH funding plays in technology-based economic development (TBED) policies across many states, particularly in the biomedical and life sciences. However, NIH funding remains a major economic driver as the world’s largest funder of biomedical and behavioral research, having generated nearly $2.50 of economic activity for every dollar spent in FY 2023, according to NIH estimates. While these awards support innovation, academic research, and regional economies, their purchasing power has eroded over time, barely keeping pace with inflation.