SSTI Digest

College earnings premiums appear to be declining for the first time in decades and the value proposition of college is beginning to fade in the eyes of many, according to the Harvard Workforce Almanac. As education costs continue to skyrocket and student debt mounts, Americans are reconsidering whether college is truly worth the expense. One means of addressing the issue is to provide data to better inform decision-making. Harvard Kenedy School has recently made available a new tool, the College-to-Jobs Map, to connect regional higher education and workforce data, allowing users to visualize the graduate supply and employment demand challenges facing their communities. The data can also highlight labor market gaps, enabling practitioners to better align curriculum with workforce needs.

Availability of a new data tool developed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) indicates that during the period surrounding the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was wide variation among the states on the ratio of unemployed persons per job opening.  Michigan peaked at 10.6 unemployed persons for each job opening, followed by Hawaii (10.3) and Nevada (10.2), far above most states, while others like D.C. (1.7) and Nebraska (2.1) and North Dakota (2.2) remained relatively unaffected. The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) program developed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is a monthly survey that collects data on job openings, hirings and separations both on a national and state-level.

A new fact sheet released today from the White House outlines three recent activities related to artificial intelligence. First, the National Science Foundation is announcing today its latest investments in National AI Research Institutes; the new $140 million across seven awardees brings the total number of institutes funded since 2020 to 25. Second, the administration is supporting an AI “red team” event at DEF CON 31 that intends to have thousands of hackers explore large language models from Google, Open AI, NVIDIA and others.

A recent project from the National Bureau of Economic Research used data from the Annual Survey of Manufactures to study the characteristics and geography of investments in robots across U.S. manufacturing establishments and find whether it revealed any impact on the economy. The team found that robotics adoption and intensity is more closely related to the size of the establishment than it is to its age. The study presents results on the distribution of robots in U.S. manufacturing by establishment characteristics and geography using new establishment-level data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau’s Annual Survey of Manufacturers for reference year 2018. This is the first establishment-level analysis of the use of robots in U.S. manufacturing, leveraging data on approximately 35,000 establishments. Two thirds of the study’s sample size was from about 187,000 large manufacturing plants, and the remaining sample was a random selection of about 51,000 small manufacturing plants.

Despite being hit with a recession brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, the latest 5-year impact report from Ben Franklin Technology Partners (BFTP) shows even higher growth than the previous five years. The most recent analysis, The Economic Impact of Ben Franklin Technology Partners, reveals that BFTP generated $400 million in tax receipts for the state and boosted Pennsylvania’s overall economy by $6.1 billion between 2017 and 2021, contributing to an overall boost of more than $30 billion since the program began more than 40 years ago.

The BFTP impact study, conducted by KLIOS Consulting and Econsult Solutions Inc., also found that BFTP invested in 612 companies across the commonwealth and generated 5,874 jobs in client firms, plus an additional 10,132 spinoff positions for a total of 16,006 new Pennsylvania jobs.

SSTI’s TBED Community of Practice efforts to strengthen the capacity of EDA grantees recently entered a new phase with the launch of subcommunities focused on risk capital, lab-to-market, and entrepreneurship development. Each of these offers a chance for informal discussions on important issues facing participants. More than 200 individuals signed up to participate in at least one subcommunity. 

Initial calls covered important topics for the tech-based economic development field:

For those readers who have seen their 53rd birthday, it was probably not a remarkable occasion. Perhaps it passed by without notice, and why should it? It isn’t regarded as a major milestone like 21, 50, 60 or 75.  What good is 53? It is often overlooked because we rarely run into it. We put 52 cards in a deck, but 53? We can’t deal with that.

Earth Day probably felt that way this year as Saturday, April 22, went by with fewer people marking its 53rd birthday than in previous years. Collectively, the gifts in its honor seem smaller, less meaningful.

The images are of people picking up litter or flowers blooming from bulbs first grown and flown from thousands of miles away. Clean energy advocates were able to use the 53rd Earth Day to celebrate the growing number of solar panels and wind turbines scattered across the planet, yet our consumption of energy continues to grow and outpace that progress. Carbon emissions continue to rise, as do average global temperatures and sea levels.

The U.S. Small Business Administration finalized new rules that provide more opportunities to leverage the agency’s flagship lending programs to support economic development strategies. The most significant changes in the rules would allow more non-depository lenders (e.g., loan funds) to participate in SBA’s lending programs, make employee ownership transitions an eligible use of loan proceeds, and remove many of the existing underwriting criteria. These changes mean tech-based economic development organizations should consider becoming approved SBA lenders.

The vision and strategy for a National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC), a key part of the R&D program set out in the CHIPS and Science Act, was released this week by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The paper, A Vision and Strategy for the National Semiconductor Technology Center, describes the center’s mission, core programs, and other features. While the paper refers to it as a center, it is expected to consist of a headquarters facility and an integrated network of NSTC-affiliated technical centers with locations geographically distributed to leverage existing capabilities. It will also start an investment fund that enables future innovations in early-stage companies and will create programs that strengthen and expand the semiconductor workforce. 

Late last week, the Economic Development Administration (EDA) released “Tech Hubs Program Fact Sheet,” which provides some information on where the Tech Hubs program is headed. However, the sheet leaves many questions unanswered and raises new questions about how the program will be administered. The program, authorized in the CHIPS and Science Act at $10 billion, received $500 million in funding to date. EDA indicates it will use $15 million for strategy development grants and the remaining funding for at least five implementation awards. Questions about the sequencing of applications, rural eligibility and timeline were not addressed in the information EDA put out, and SSTI’s request for clarification on these points went unanswered as of press time.

Venture capital (VC) activity continued to decline in the first quarter of 2023, according to data from Pitchbook-NVCA Venture Monitor Q1 2023. Total deal count declined, with exit count and venture-growth also slowing, and angel and seed activity hitting a 10-quarter low. The difficulties facing the market grew with tensions from the continuation of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, and high inflation rates.

Pitchbook reports a total observed deal count of 2,856 across angel, seed, and VC with a total deal value of $37 billion, the second lowest quarter deal value since Q3 2018, which was $35.1 billion, and lowest deal count since Q1 2013, which was 2,460. 

The European Council and the European Parliament have reached a provisional agreement to strengthen Europe’s semiconductor ecosystem, a deal designed to double the EU’s global market share in semiconductors from 10% to 20% by 2030. The agreement is projected to mobilize more than $47 billion (€43 billion) in public and private investments, with $3.6 billion (€3.3 billion) coming from the EU budget.

The agreement — which still needs to be finalized, endorsed and formally adopted — contains three main lines of action: