These 7 states really know biotech (and probably have jobs) - From MedCity News

What makes a dominant biotech hub? It comes down to five workforce sectors, according to Battelle: agricultural feedstock and chemicals; drugs and pharmaceuticals; medical devices; research, testing and medical labs; and bioscience-related distribution.

Battelle’s new jobs report released at BIO this week outlined not only the national and state-by-state job growth in all these sectors, but which parts of the country also have notable clusters of specialized jobs. Shake out all their data and only seven states have the magic combination of both a large employment base and a specialized concentration of jobs in at least two of the five sectors. Three states can lay claim to three of the five.

Most of the job data was not surprising. Battelle’s numbers, which analyzed job growth from 2001 to 2010, showed biotech has grown while the total private sector and the other “knowledge economy” areas like aerospace and IT services had declined. From 2007 to 2010, though, every biotech job sector but the research, testing and medical laboratories sector shed jobs.

The future life science economy is a wild card. Will your job be outsourced overseas or to a contract manufacturing company down the street? Will the region you’re in have the workforce to manage your company’s growth? Here’s the list of states that have a big concentration of jobs in multiple sectors, with workforce strength in multiple specializations.

The report offers a breakdown of every state. There are tons of interesting tidbits including the fact that the states that simply added the most jobs last year — no matter the concentration strength — were Arizona, California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Oregon, Utah, Texas and Wisconsin.

See article for the top 7 listing:
http://medcitynews.com/2012/06/these-7-states-really-know-biotech-and-probably-have-jobs/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=these-7-states-really-know-biotech-and-probably-have-jobs

FDA: Safety, efficacy, public health – and economy? from Mass Device

FDA officials and consumer advocates balked yesterday at legislative attempts to alter the federal watchdog agency's mission statement to include promoting job growth, competition and economic growth.

A U.S. House version of a bill reauthorizing FDA user fees for medical devices and pharmaceuticals would include economic obligations FDA officials said would distract from the agency's responsibility to patients.

The revision, proposed by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), wasn't well received by FDA devices chief Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, MedPageToday reported.

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"Jobs where? Jobs for who?" Shuren asked during a House Energy & Commerce Health Subcommittee meeting. "Is that really a condition of when a device comes to market?"
This isn't Rogers' 1st attempt at making job promotion an FDA responsibility. Last year he introduced a House bill pushing the change, an effort supported by Sen. Dan Coates (R-Ind.) and his "FDA Mission Reform Act," introduced last December.

Rogers also put his name on a recent bill, co-sponsored by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), which would require medical device makers to include pediatric information in certain FDA applications, a rule that was earlier withdrawn by the FDA after the agency received "significant adverse comment" upon implementing the change in the summer of 2010.

That measure was tucked into a larger bill aimed at reauthorizing and extending the Pediatric Medical Device Safety & Improvement Act of 2007, granting device makers the ability to make profits on pediatric devices cleared under Humanitarian Device Exemption and extending a grant program for research on pediatric devices.

Markey attempted last month to squeeze his Safety of Untested & New Devices Act into the user fee bill, but the provision, which had no Republican co-sponsors, was spiked by the subcommittee, Boston.com reported. The bill would have given the FDA the power to request that companies submitting new devices catalog any recalls or safety issues in predicate devices.

more...
http://www.massdevice.com/news/fda-safety-efficacy-public-health-%E2%80%93-and-economy

Healthcare to add 4.2M jobs by 2020

Healthcare jobs will grow twice as fast as the general economy, with an additional 4.2 million jobs by 2020, according to a study by Center for Health Workforce Studies at the University at Albany. Nearly one in nine U.S. jobs will be in the healthcare sector by 2020, the report states.

"Health sector jobs and health occupations have continued to grow, even in a weak economy, and will remain a major source of jobs for years to come." Center for Health Workforce Studies Director Jean Moore said in a research announcement Friday.

While jobs across industries fell 2 percent between 2000 and 2010, healthcare employment grew by more than a quarter throughout the same period, even during the economic downturn.

"One of the things I wasn't expecting was how much growth there was even during the recession," Moore told Kaiser Health News. "I would have expected some tempering of the growth."

Read more: Healthcare to add 4.2M jobs by 2020 - FierceHealthcare http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/story/healthcare-boom-42m-more-jobs-2020/2012-04-09?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal#ixzz1re65A5n2
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