Anchored by the largest ever investment since the MoneyTree Report began covering venture capital investment in 1995, the $13 billion total dollars invested in the second quarter of 2014 marks the largest total quarterly investment since $13.1 billion was invested in the first quarter of 2001, according to new data from the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) MoneyTree survey. Likewise, the $22.7 billion invested in the first half of 2014 is the highest first half total since 2001.

As the Great Recession wanes, an increasing amount of research has been conducted to assess its impact on entrepreneurship in the United States. Authors with the Kauffman Foundation found that firm formation in the United States is remarkably constant over time, although the death rate of companies rises during recessions.

In an SSTI Digest article last month, SSTI detailed the most recent MoneyTree reports from National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC). Halfway through FY 2014, U.S. venture capital investments reached $22.7 billion, the highest first-half total since 2001. Using halves of fiscal years as the unit of analysis, this Digest article examines each state’s share of venture capital dollars and deals since 2010.

Within the past few months, several indices have been released that attempt to rank states based on their entrepreneurial activity. From the perspective of economic development agencies, these indices are particularly helpful in assessing where each state stands according to the numerous ways to measure entrepreneurship. These indices, however, should be taken with a grain of salt; issues can arise when too much importance is placed on these lists for the sake of competition or the need for press.

Over the five-year period from 2012 to 2017, as total venture capital investments more than doubled, growing from $41.2 billion to $84.0 billion, the number of deals increased by just 2.7 percent according to new data from the NVCA-Pitchbook Venture Capital Monitor. In 2017, more than half of all venture capital deals and three-quarters of all venture capital dollars went to companies in California, New York, and Massachusetts in 2017.

An aging, more diverse workforce is what the Bureau of Labor Statistics foresees in the coming decade, with a declining participation rate, which may in turn restrict economic growth. The new projections released this week echo the downward trend in the rate of labor force participation since the peak of 67.3 percent in early 2000. While recent trends show an increasing level of participation among the 55+ crowd, there has been a decreasing level of participation among 16 to 24-year-olds as school enrollment has increased, as well as a continuing decline among the prime working-age cohort of 25 to 54-year-olds.

An SSTI analysis of the labor force participation rate of the prime age workers for each state revealed a great amount of variation among the states. The map below shows the participation rate for this cohort averaged out over 2014-2016 to account for yearly fluctuations.

Last week, The Digest covered newly released data from the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Science Education Statistics, which found that for the first time in five years, federal funding for higher education research and development increased in both current and constant dollars.

The growth and intensity of higher education R&D (HERD) expenditures varies considerably across metropolitan areas, a recent SSTI analysis of National Science Foundation data finds. New York ($4.3 billion), Boston ($3.2 billion), and Baltimore ($2.9 billion) had the highest overall levels of HERD expenditures in 2016. In that same year, Ithaca, New York (19.1 percent), State College, Pennsylvania (9.5 percent), and College Station, Texas (9.4 percent) had the highest levels of HERD intensity – measured as the share of HERD expenditures to gross metropolitan product.

Between 2010 and 2015, the vast majority of metro areas experienced growth in gross metropolitan product (GMP), led by energy-intensive regions such as Odessa, TX, and Bismarck, ND, according to an SSTI analysis of recently released data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). The Elkhart, IN, and San Jose, CA, metropolitan areas experienced the largest increase in GMP per capita over the same period.

Nearly half of the U.S. states and the District of Columbia saw a 10 percent or greater increase in higher education R&D expenditures from FY 2010 to FY 2015 with five of those states (Connecticut, Georgia, Massachusetts, Nebraska, and Utah) seeing at least a 20 percent change, according to the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) survey for 2015. Between FY10-15 overall U.S. research and development (R&D) spending at U.S.

Last week, SSTI looked at recently released data on venture capital dollars and deals by state, finding that total investment has skyrocketed but remains heavily concentrated in a few markets. This week we examine this data through two additional lenses: VC investment intensity and VC investment per technology startup.

Note: this article has been updated.

For decades, state and local economies have leaned heavily on their anchor institutions during times of economic uncertainty and transition. An analysis finds that total employment in “Eds and Meds” industries increased in every state from 2005 to 2015. This article breaks down the growth and geography of Eds and Meds employment at the state level, while next week’s issue of the Digest will explore this data by metropolitan area.

Consideration of a state’s trends in the distribution of SBIR awards by federal agency may help program leaders and policy makers optimize the design and performance for state and regional support of innovation-based startups. For instance, knowing which federal agencies provide the dominant share of awards in a state can inform a program’s marketing and outreach efforts, and, more importantly for the startups being assisted, it can guide recruiting the right mix of mentors and knowledge assets to a program’s technical assistance capabilities.

The R&D performed at colleges and universities is an important driver for the innovation economy — generating new knowledge, spurring invention, training STEM talent, and supporting economic development. This edition of SSTI’s Useful Stats analyzes metropolitan-level data for 2019 from the National Science Foundation on higher education R&D (HERD) expenditures and personnel. Nearly 981,000 individuals in higher education across the U.S. were classified as R&D personnel in 2019.

An important element of a region’s innovation community is its knowledge capital, and one way to try to determine a locality’s knowledge capital is to examine the number of individuals receiving research-based doctorate degrees in the science and engineering (S&E) fields. The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently updated their Survey of Earned Doctorates with data for the 2018-2019 academic year.

A large majority (nearly 87 percent) of U.S. counties showed growth in their gross domestic product (GDP) from 2018 to 2019, according to an SSTI analysis of data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). GDP is the measure for the total value of goods and services produced in an area, and is one of the primary economic indicators used by researchers and policymakers. This edition of Useful Stats examines the recently updated (BEA) data and provides an analysis of 2019 total county GDP, 2019 county GDP per capita, and the percent change in each measure from 2018 to 2019.

This week’s edition of Useful Stats examines the contributions to county-level GDP in 2019 by industry group. Specifically, this analysis identifies the industries that contributed the most to the economic output of each county in 2019, finding that the real estate and rental and leasing; manufacturing; and government and government enterprises industry groups were vital economic drivers in terms of both their contributions to national GDP as well as the number of counties where they were the top contributor.

Industry investment in research and development (R&D) indicates, literally, how invested each state’s businesses are in creating new products and processes. To better-understand industry’s commitment to innovation, business R&D can be viewed as a percentage of each state’s private sector gross domestic product (GDP), providing a measure of research intensity. This measure highlights substantial differences in the orientation of states’ businesses toward research, with some states seeing an investment rate of less than 1 percent while others are above 5 percent.

Given higher education’s role in generating the knowledge that catalyzes innovative new technologies developed by high-growth startups, R&D conducted at institutions of higher education is one of the most important metrics for evaluating an area’s innovation economy. This edition of Useful Stats examines NSF’s recently updated Higher Education R&D (HERD) survey, finding that most states, although not all, experienced growth in HERD expenditures from 2018 to 2019.