Visualizing Our Scope

Right now, we're working on finalizing some reports detailing the presence of the biopharmaceutical research sector in each state.

The reports include a range of pertinent information, such as how much employees in each state contribute to state and federal taxes, and how many jobs they help to support through indirect work and through individual employee spending.

We hope to be able to make them available to you in a few days. But in the meantime, it's worth looking at the related report on the U.S. as a whole.

For example, in 2008 (the year the most recent data were available), biopharmaceutical employees in America paid approximately three times as much in federal and state taxes as employees in the rest of economy. With more than 650,000 employees across America, the sector supported a total of nearly 3.1 million jobs.

And, as America was in the midst of a downturn, biopharmaceutical research companies did their part to try to help keep us afloat, with exports rising by nearly 60 percent from 2005 to 2009, to $46 billion - or 5 percent of total U.S. exports.

PhRMA's president and CEO John Castellani once pointed out that if you sat down with leaders of foreign countries who had never heard about the biopharmaceutical sector and told them about the value it provides, they'd welcome it onto their shores. And on this blog, we've talked about how they do just that!