Manufacturing growth is helping fuel one of the longest expansions in the U.S., steadily adding jobs since 2010, according to Economic Innovation Group’s (EIG) recent data brief, Manufacturing’s Real But Patchwork Rebound. While manufacturing job growth has risen over the past two years, the report notes that its growth was broad but uneven.
Two recent executive orders issued by the White House have met with mixed reactions. While one order intended to ease the regulatory process for certain biotech products was met with favor by some in that industry, another order that could eliminate at least one third of the current federal advisory committees that was issued just days later, was roundly criticized.
An issue brief this month from the Pew Research Center asserts that despite the current national economic expansion still underway, states are still coping with lasting effects of the 18-month recession that ended in 2009. Calling it a “lost decade,” the authors found that although budget pressures have eased in several ways, states still have not fully restored cuts in funding for infrastructure, public schools and universities, the number of state workers, and support for local governments.
In a recent report focused on the impact of the small-scale manufacturing sector, the Urban Manufacturing Alliance (UMA) compiled what they say is a first-ever examination of what this emerging sector looks like and what may help charge its growth. They found an information gap on these businesses, as many of them combine design, art and production, and fall outside of data collection categories used to classify manufacturers.
Reshoring manufacturing companies claim to be able to innovate at increasing rates, but some cite challenges with hiring qualified workers and with the country’s regulatory and trade policy environment, according to a new report from Select USA, a national program led by the U.S. Department of Commerce focused on business investment. In Reinvesting in the USA: A Case Study of Reshoring and Expanding in the United States, authors from Select USA look at the experiences of six manufacturing companies that chose to reinvest in their U.S. operations, providing detail on what drove them to reshore, challenges and benefits to the move, and general lessons learned. They find that, although the reshoring process was more expensive and time consuming than the case companies expected, local partners such as economic development agencies provided valuable resources to make the process easier.
This month, SSTI research has examined changes in total R&D and total R&D intensity for each state over a 15-year period from 2002 to 2016. In this final installment of the series, this article looks at how the performance of R&D in the states changed over time.
The U.S. House has now passed 10 of the 12 annual appropriations bills that fund federal agencies. Agencies with House-approved budgets include the Department of Commerce, Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and Small Business Administration. Federal R&D and Commerce’s Regional Innovation Strategies would see substantial increases, and — due to amendments made on the House floor — SBA’s accelerators and clusters programs would retain their funding.
At this week’s SSTI 2019 Dialogue in Washington, D.C., senior leaders from 30 member organizations talked innovation policy and opportunities with each other and with federal leaders. Those speaking with us at the event included: Congresswoman and research and technology subcommittee chair Haley Stevens; EDA Director John Fleming; NIST associate director for innovation and industry services Phillip Singerman; NIH deputy director for the office of extramural research Jodi Black; and Senate small business committee professional staff member Renée Bender.
Thanks to leadership by Senators Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.), the Senate approved a revamped authorization of the Regional Innovation Strategies program (RIS) as part of its National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2020 (NDAA). The bill would extend the program’s funding authority to $50 million per year through FY 2024.
As a way to help encourage innovation and workforce development in Northern Indiana, a five-year, $42.4 million grant from the Lilly Endowment will support the Labs for Industry Futures and Transformation (LIFT) Network. An effort of the University of Notre Dame and the South Bend – Elkhart Regional Partnership, the LIFT Network will launch iNDustry Labs at Notre Dame’s Innovation Park, a burgeoning innovation district on the campus’ southern end. This is the sixth region in Indiana where the Lilly Endowment has made an economic development commitment.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Funds for entrepreneurial training, technical assistance with R&D, and matching grants for innovative small businesses are among the items now part of Minnesota’s economic development toolkit thanks to new funding in the state’s recently signed FY 2020 biennial budget. Under the approved budget, Launch Minnesota will receive $2.5 million in each of the next two fiscal years to support innovation and entrepreneurship. Originally called the Minnesota Innovation Collaborative in Gov.
A recent paper published by SSRN provides a detailed look at the relationship between financial incentives and state fiscal health. The authors control for many potentially-related factors and still find significant, negative impacts of incentives. While the study helps fuel calls for critical analysis and careful implementation of tax incentives, the results may not be as clear cut as some coverage may suggest.
The New Mexico Economic Development Department is launching a new grant program to facilitate the transfer and commercialization of technologies developed in New Mexico national labs and universities to business startups. The New Mexico Technology Transfer Assistance Grants (NM-TAG) are designed to help offset the risk associated with licensing new technologies and assist the transfer and deployment of new innovative technologies.
For passive control of tidal electricity systems, permeable courtyard tiles, and fog water collection units, three winning teams of middle school and high school innovators looked to cucumber seeds, plants from the yam family and Namib beetles, respectively. The three projects were among the six selected for recognition out of 78 participating in the 2019 Biomimicry Youth Design Challenge. Biomimicry approaches sustainable innovation by looking first to nature to find proven competencies — patterns and strategies in the systems vernacular — for dealing with similar c
A new program designed to support additive manufacturing (AM) technology insertion into the existing U.S. Army supply chain could also grow the southwestern Pennsylvania manufacturing sector. Catalyst Connection, in partnership with the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM) and America Makes, launched AMNOW, a potentially multi-phase, multi-year contract funded by the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (CCDC) under the U.S. Army Futures Command.
The Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC) plans to launch a seed fund to support the development of life sciences startups outside of the Greater Boston area. These areas, many already rich in major research university and medical center anchor institutions, should be bolstered by this early-stage funding currently concentrated in Boston.
While higher education remains a viable path to economic advancement, adults without a postsecondary degree are increasingly benefitting from non-degree certificates and certifications, according to a recent report. As automation and technological advances demand more skills from workers in the changing economy, Strada Education Network and Lumina Foundation partnered to determine the value and impact of the growing number of non-degree credentials.
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 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.
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.