The following is an excerpt from an article that originally appeared on WBUR on August 27, 2024:
Despite layoffs and declines in funding over the past year, Massachusetts’ biopharma industry added 3,000 net new jobs in 2023, according to a new report released Tuesday by MassBio.
The biotech trade group’s annual “Industry Snapshot” report examines the growth of the state’s life sciences industry in a number of ways, including employment, funding, drug development and other metrics.
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There are nearly 117,000 workers in the biopharma sector, which represents just 3.7% of the state’s overall workforce. But the industry’s job growth accounted for nearly 17% of job growth in Massachusetts in 2023, according to the report.
Much of that job growth was bolstered by research and development — the state’s “bread and butter,” according to MassBio spokesman Ben Bradford.
“We remain the best place in the world for research and development, especially that early stage innovation that’s coming out of our hospitals, colleges, universities, research institutes. That’s why the large pharmas are here,” Bradford said.
Interestingly, of the venture capital funding that has been invested so far this year, most of it is benefitting cities and towns outside of Cambridge, the state’s life sciences hub. According to the report, 65% of venture capital funding was invested in companies located outside of Cambridge — including in Waltham, Watertown and Framingham. That’s up from 55% in the first half of 2023, the report noted.
This “tremendous” distribution of funding shows the biopharma industry “is able to support many different micro clusters across the Commonwealth,” Bradford said.