Aided by favorable state tax insurance policies, the rising life sciences sector in Massachusetts now options 132,000 jobs and a brand new report predicts one other 42,000 new jobs will come on-line over the subsequent decade.
The report touts a optimistic outlook for the trade that policymakers have embraced and incentivized, but in addition options extra warning indicators that demand for expertise continues to outpace provide in Massachusetts.
The Massachusetts Biotechnology Education Foundation’s 2023 Massachusetts Life Sciences Employment Outlook report recommends “reinvigorated recruitment and retention approaches,” noting speedy development in computing and data know-how jobs to assist the sector.
Authors projected that the variety of life sciences jobs in Massachusetts will develop by roughly a 3rd within the subsequent decade. They count on greater than 6,600 common job openings per yr in “key” occupations corresponding to biotechnicians and medical lab technicians, however the report mentioned one problem is that Massachusetts faculties and universities are solely producing “half of this amount from new graduates in degree fields most aligned with these openings.”
Looking forward, greater than 8,500 of the projected new jobs shall be scientists, about 7,000 shall be administration positions, and computing and IT jobs are projected to account for greater than 5,300 over the subsequent decade.
MassBioEd mentioned the trade additionally has substantial wants in “‘secondary’ or non-life sciences fields of expertise,” like IT, gross sales, advertising and marketing and information sciences. Employers might want to enhance consciousness about job openings “across a broader set of degree programs and educational settings,” the report mentioned.
Between 2019 and 2022, employment at Massachusetts life sciences firms elevated 14.6%, in comparison with a 9.4% bounce for the nation as a complete, in keeping with the report.
However, that development has been uneven throughout completely different trade segments. In Massachusetts, jobs within the biopharmaceutical and medical lab sector surged practically 22% between 2019 and 2022, whereas employment dropped 3.6% at hospitals and analysis hospitals and fell 16.2% at faculties and universities, the report mentioned.
The trade can also be considerably concentrated within the state’s extra densely populated japanese area, with practically 90,000 staff in simply two counties.
More than 74,000 life sciences staff, representing practically 70% of the sphere, are situated in Middlesex County the place main firms like AstraZeneca and Biogen anchor the Cambridge hotspot. Suffolk County, which is residence to Boston, had the second-highest variety of life sciences staff with 15,000.
Worcester, Essex and Norfolk Counties every had fewer than 10,000 life sciences staff, in keeping with the report, which additionally lumped the 9 different counties right into a “rest of the state” class that equally claimed fewer than 10,000 life sciences staff.
Beacon Hill has lengthy embraced particular insurance policies to assist the progressive sector. On Tuesday, the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center introduced $24.4 million in tax incentive awards to 43 life sciences firms, with the expectation that almost 1,600 new jobs shall be created.
— Michael P. Norton and Chris Lisinski / State House News Service
Source: www.bostonherald.com”