A report on employment trends from hiring firm Robert Half found that 2020 presents greater challenges for employers looking to expand their workforce as the country’s labor market is near full employment and job openings remain at high levels.

Proving that innovation is appealing to states regardless of their size or political leanings, new initiatives in both Democratic and Republican states, as well as large states like California and small states like Vermont, are driving innovation agendas into action in areas ranging from clean energy and aid for students and colleges, to new venture capital investments and bond financing to support business collaborations with higher education to help translate cutting-edge research into products and companies.

After more than a year of research and facing greater disruption to the workforce than imagined at the outset, the National Governors Association (NGA) has released a guide for governors and state policymakers to help build a technologically resilient workforce.

In 2019, the administrations and legislatures in many states grappled with if and how to adjust state economic development initiatives to leverage the federal Opportunity Zone (OZ) program. The actions of 12 states that implemented new activities are described below.

Advancing programs to increase students’ tech skills, raising awareness of the skilled trades, attracting out of state workers by paying moving expenses, and creating a Governor’s Workforce Council, were just a few of the new programs across the states dealing with current and looming shortages in the workforce. This week SSTI takes a look at some of the different workforce development initiatives that surfaced in 2019 as part of our ongoing coverage of innovation programs that were implemented this past year.

While the longest economic expansion in modern times in the U.S. continues and fears of a nationwide recession have subsided, there are signs that growth is slowing, and some states may be at risk for a recession.

Since 2005, the One North Carolina Small Business Program has made 423 SBIR/STTR matching awards worth nearly $26 million to more than 250 businesses throughout the state. A new assessment, which updates an earlier report, provides academic rigor to a standard program review. The results indicate that even beyond survey-based attestations to the program’s value, there is a statistically-significant impact of North Carolina’s funding for the competitiveness of recipients.

In general, the effect of the pandemic on states’ budgets due to the wave of business, retail, and commerce shutdowns, as well as other reduced economic activity across the nation, is not entirely known, or too early to forecast; however, a number of states are beginning to experience the initial impacts of a substantial downturn. With several states having already enacted their 2020-21 budgets, special sessions are expected later this year to deal with declining revenues. Others ended sessions early without a new fiscal year spending plan in place.

The West Virginia Legislature recently approved a bill to create the West Virginia Science & Technology Policy Advisory Board.  The 11- member board will be appointed by the Governor and is expected to:

The fallout from COVID-19 is growing as unemployment numbers skyrocket, small businesses are faced with closures, and employers try to protect both their business and employees. A just-released national study conducted by America’s Small Business Development Centers (SBDC) and Thryv Inc.,  found that 69 percent of U.S. small businesses have already experienced a large drop in demand due to the coronavirus pandemic and 60 percent believe demand will continue to decline.

Postposed primary elections, shuttered schools, sheltering in place orders and millions of workers shifting to home offices while others are displaced completely — the COVID-19 pandemic is radically altering the way of life for the country. States, too, are scrambling to respond to the pandemic while dealing with ongoing legislative sessions and budget negotiations. Some of those responses are detailed here.

Entrepreneurial support and capital access remain key concerns for regional innovation economies, as evidenced by the abundance of new activity in 2019. From accelerators, many of which are sector-specific, to seed funds, we highlight 26 of the most interesting developments from the past year. This is the latest in our series of articles highlighting innovation system activities in states across the country in 2019.

Between March and April of 2020, the United States saw a massive drop in employment due to the COVID-19 pandemic: from approximately 151 million employees to fewer than 131 million. More than two years since the beginning of the pandemic, surveys suggest a near-complete recovery to pre-pandemic employment levels. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) through March 2022 (the most recent final data published by BLS) reveal an average decrease of just 1 percent in employment across the country as whole since February 2020. While the U.S.

The Illinois Science & Technology Coalition (ISTC) released its 2022 R&D Index earlier this week. The 2022 R&D Index, which is one component of ISTC’s Illinois Innovation Index, assesses Illinois’s capacity for innovation and economic growth amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The last R&D Index released by ISTC was in 2019.

Among the key findings of the report:

As the Economic Development Administration (EDA) continues to award its $3 billion allotment of pandemic relief funding made available by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA), many states are taking aim at several specific areas of economic concern — while others are maintaining a broad perspective.

This edition of SSTI’s Useful Stats examines the expected allocation of approximately $8.5 billion in State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI) funding by state and allocation category based on the Department of the Treasury’s recent guidance update.

The New Mexico Economic Development Department released a new strategic plan that identifies core challenges to the state and a multi-part approach to the future. The six challenges include talent attraction, misalignment between higher education and industry, public sector “dominance” of innovation, and concentration in a few industries.

While the overall U.S. venture capital market has drawn headlines for record-breaking total investment levels in 2021, the story has been far different for smaller deals. Data currently suggests a decline in deals under $1 million, and only modest growth for deals under $5 million. The final data may tell a slightly different story,[1] but the level of activity at the smaller end of the spectrum is clearly quite different than what is driving market coverage.

State government agencies’ expenditures for research and development totaled nearly $2.5 billion in FY 2021, an increase of 1.1% from FY 2020, but far below the year-over-year inflation of 6.4% when measured in February 2022. The findings on state R&D were recently reported by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES).

The National Association of State Budget Officers’ (NASBO) 2022 State Expenditures Report found total state spending to have grown an estimated 7.3% between fiscal years (FY) 2021 and 2022 ($2.66 to $2.86 trillion), 1.5 percentage points higher than the 36-year average growth of 5.8% per annum.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced the approval of seven additional states’ programs for State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI) funding, totaling over $1.6 billion: Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Virginia. A short summary of these states’ plans, all of which include investment capital, are available below:

In addition to last week’s Digest story on all state expenditures, the National Association of State Budget Officers’ (NASBO) 2022 State Expenditures Report detailed information on higher education expenditures, finding a 9.4% increase (from $225 to $247 billion) in total higher education expenditures ov

With President Biden’s signing the CHIPS and Science Act on Aug. 9, states and universities are already making plans to build on the funding opportunities present in the legislation.

Thirty-six states held gubernatorial contests in Tuesday’s (Nov. 8) mid-term elections. By the end of the last week, winners in 32 states had been chosen.

Going into Tuesday’s 2022 mid-term elections, less electoral shakeup in state legislatures was expected after states’ redistricting efforts shored up many safe seats for incumbents — with the one notable exception being Michigan, thanks to an independent commission that had drawn a competitive map that put both legislative chambers in play.