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Economic Impact

The Biopharmaceutical Industry Boosts the U.S. Economy

The biopharmaceutical industry is a major driver of innovation and economic growth both within the U.S. and globally. The industry’s growth and resilience lead to jobs for significant numbers of highly skilled, highly productive, and highly paid workers across the country. Sustaining this important driver of the U.S. economy is a set of robust and long-standing pro-innovation policies that include strong intellectual property protections, a well-functioning and evidence-based regulatory system, support for research and development, and other policies that recognize both the societal and economic impacts of medical innovation.

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) engaged TEConomy Partners, LLC, to develop an independent estimate of the economic contributions of the U.S. biopharmaceutical industry and its closely integrated supply chain in 2022.

Explore all fact sheets at the Industry Economic Impact page for the entire U.S., the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico on this map.

Download the full report on the 2022 Economic Impact of the U.S. Biopharmaceutical Industry below. 


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Creating jobs

The U.S. biopharmaceutical industry directly employed more than one million workers in 2022, and with its substantial employment multiplier of 4.69, the industry supports more than 3.8 million additional U.S. jobs for a total employment impact of more than 4.9 million jobs supported across the U.S. economy.

The industry has been able to weather economic downturns, demonstrated by solid 30.8 percent growth since 2015, providing important stability to both the production of life saving medicines and to the U.S. and regional economies in which it operates.

With average annual wages and benefits in 2022 of more than $157,000 per worker — over $60,000 more than the average U.S. manufacturing job, and more than twice the U.S. average across all industries — biopharmaceutical industry jobs are both high-wage and high-quality.

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Overall Economic Contribution

The U.S. biopharmaceutical industry exceeded $800 billion in direct output in 2022, and with the ripple effect of this production throughout the U.S. economy, supported an additional $850 billion in output through its suppliers and other sectors of the economy, for a total of more than $1.65 trillion. This combined, total output impact represents 3.6 percent of all U.S. output.

Although just a snapshot of the sector’s total impact, these findings demonstrate the importance of a strong and vibrant biopharmaceutical industry in helping other businesses grow and contributing to robust local and national economies.

Through its research, production, and overall operations, the U.S. biopharmaceutical industry directly accounts for 1.6 percent of U.S. GDP (i.e., its “value added”). Including the economic activity driven in other sectors of the economy the industry generates and supports more than $880 billion in value added within the economy, or 3.4 percent of U.S. GDP.

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