The life sciences industry has seen significant growth over the past 10 years in Georgia. From 2007 to 2017, employment in the Peach State’s industry sciences grew by 14.9 percent. That growth outpaced the 7.7 percent national growth, Georgia Bio announced.
The life sciences industry has seen significant growth over the past 10 years in Georgia. From 2007 to 2017, employment in the Peach State’s industry sciences grew by 14.9 percent. That growth outpaced the 7.7 percent national growth, Georgia Bio announced.
Not only did the life sciences industry in Georgia outpace national growth, but the report from the trade association also showed that the growth in that sector outgrew private employments across all industries in the state. Georgia Bio said the report identified 1,960 unique life science establishments that contributed 68,300 jobs and $10 billion to Georgia’s Gross Domestic Product. Because it’s such a strong driver in the state, Georgia Bio said the life sciences industry supports a total of approximately 194,000 jobs and contributes $21.8 billion to Georgia’s GDP. Full details of the report are expected to be made in a few weeks, Georgia Bio said earlier this week.
Georgia is home to 400 life science companies that employ 20,000 people.
Maria Thacker-Goethe, president of Georgia Bio, said the clear impact that the life sciences industry has had on the state’s economy is the “top reason Georgia Bio and the Georgia BioEd Institute work hard to ensure the state’s educators and career development professionals can access the resources they need to ensure our workforce meets the needs of the fast growing, care-focused, high paying industry.”
According to a report on the industry in the state, about 42 percent of the life science jobs in Georgia require a high school education or equivalent, while 32 percent require a bachelor’s degree. Of the 10 occupations projected to grow over the next decade, seven require postsecondary education, ranging from technical and associate’s degrees, two require bachelor’s degrees and two call for a doctoral or professional degree, Georgia Bio said.
At the heart of Georgia’s life sciences growth is the state’s capital city, Atlanta, which is home to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The city, which is home to several international corporations such as Coca-Cola, was recently placed at No. 8 in its top-ranked emerging life science clusters. The report, conducted by CBRE, said Atlanta exhibits “an attractive combination of a substantive life science workforce, including key scientists, strong recent life sciences employment growth, ample NIH funding, top-ranked schools and medical institutions and a sizeable high-tech workforce to support future convergence between the industries.
The growth in Georgia’s life science industry should come as no surprise, given the groundwork that has been put in place by various public and private players. At the 2017 BIO convention in San Diego, EJane Caraway, director of Life Sciences and Corporate Solutions at the Georgia Department of Economic Development, pointed to multiple factors that contributed to the growth in the state. Caraway told BioSpace that the state has strong public, private and academic institutions that create a supportive network for the industry, including Emory University, Georgia Tech and the aforementioned CDC.
The importance of these institutions that Caraway stressed the importance of two years ago cannot be understated. The Georgia BIO report shows that these academic and professional organizations helped bring $549 million in NIH research funding to the state in 2018. Moreover, the report shows that annual NIH funding to those institutions has grown by 20 percent since 2010, more than double the national average of less than 8 percent.
“Since 2010, the number of federal small business research innovation grants for life science startups has doubled in Georgia,” Russell Allen, president and chief executive officer of the Georgia Research Alliance said in a statement. “With the ingenuity of our universities and the strong support from our government and industry we are seeing more life science inventions making their way from the lab to the marketplace and, most importantly, into the lives of Georgians.”
