The New York/New Jersey metro area ranks No. 1 across the nation for life sciences manufacturing talent, which includes drug manufacturing as well as cell and gene therapy, according to CBRE’s annual U.S. Life Sciences Talent Trends report, which was recently released.
The new study analyzes life sciences employment by subsector, mapping out the top markets and employment trends across the research & development, manufacturing and medical technology fields.
New York/New Jersey leads the nation in the number of new biology, biological and biomedical sciences graduates, contributing to the region’s ranking as a top life science hub.
“Emerging biotechnologies and gene therapies require increasingly skilled manufacturing employees to meet the growing need,” CBRE Vice Chair Bill Hartman said. “New York/New Jersey holds the advantage as an historic leader in pharmaceutical, medicine and chemical manufacturing. We have a well-established base of manufacturing and distribution labor.”
“Identifying the appropriate talent pool for a company’s manufacturing needs can be complex, with a variety of extremely specific needs and skills,” Tom Sullivan, executive vice president, CBRE, said. “For example, a large pharmaceutical company’s high-volume production facility might have different needs compared to a smaller cell and gene therapy organization.”
According to the CBRE report, the life sciences research & development subsector in New York/New Jersey ranks No. 4 nationally with a total of 43,290 occupations, mostly as data scientists (16,330) and medical scientists (8,883).
The life sciences manufacturing subsector boasts New York/New Jersey as its largest market, with a talent pool of 57,650 led by inspectors, testers, sorters, samplers and weighers (17,640) and packaging and filling machine setters, operators and tenders (14,630).
New York/New Jersey’s medtech subsector, which includes designing and producing medical devices, ranks No. 5 with 37,960 occupations, anchored by big companies. Electrical, electronic and electromechanical assemblers were the largest portion of the talent pool (8,860), followed by industrial engineers (8,630).
The report, now in its third year, evaluates the largest 100 U.S. life sciences labor markets against multiple criteria for each of the three specialties. For the R&D subsector, that included the number and concentration of life sciences researchers; number of new graduates, and specifically with doctorates in that field; concentration of all doctorate holders; and concentration of jobs in the broader professional, scientific and technical services professions.
