The International Economic Development Council (IEDC), in partnership with six national and international associations and the U.S. Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration (EDA), announced the launch of the inaugural Economic Recovery Corps (ERC) program on May 11.

America’s Seed Fund Week, a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) event, will be held online May 15-18. The event connects entrepreneurs and organizations that support entrepreneurs to SBIR and STTR, known as America’s Seed Fund. America’s Seed Fund is the largest source of early stage funding in the U.S.

This morning, NSF announced 44 development, or Type-1, awards from its first Regional Innovation Engines competition. According NSF’s visualization, 33 of the lead organizations are from academic institutions, with 13 of those from institutions that are not classified as R1s, and the remaining 11 leads from other types of nonprofits.

This article was edited on April 19th, 2023, to correct for an error in the original data analysis.

What is the value of a college degree today? While tuition costs continue to rise, opinions on the perceived value of the degrees institutions of higher education provide are falling.

Last year's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) reauthorization included a new requirement that participating agencies work to identify foreign connections of applying companies. Certain types of connections to “countries of concern,” which include China and Russia, could result in the small business being prohibited from receiving federal funds. The U.S.

EDA is now accepting applications for its $4.5 million FY 2023 STEM Talent Challenge to support programs to train science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) talent and help fuel regional innovation economies.

A new Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) release shows that over the past five years of available data (2018-2022), nationwide per capita personal income increased by 21.64%, rising from $53,786 to $65,423, with an average yearly percentage change of +5.04%.

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) recently unveiled a new strategy aimed at improving and increasing access to work experiences for young people. Emphasizing the need for a comprehensive vision to address the challenges young people face in accessing education, training, and meaningful work experiences, the Youth Employment Works strategy represents the first national youth employment strategy in over two decades.

The U.S. Census Bureau in February released a new experimental data product designed to better measure the business dynamics of innovative firms (BDS-IF). The new Business Dynamics Statistics of U.S. High Tech Industries provides measures of business dynamics for what the Census classifies as high-tech and non-high-tech industries, defined by science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) occupation intensity.

Technologies developed by West Virginia University and the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks that extract and separate rare elements and critical minerals from acid mine drainage and coal waste, will each receive $8 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy.

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 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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Loan Program Office (LPO) has announced a conditional loan commitment of $2 billion to Redwood Materials for the construction and expansion of a battery materials campus in McCarran, Nevada.

The U.S. Department of Treasury has announced approval of $635.6 million in State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI) funding for Texas and Washington. The addition of these two states means 48 states and three territories have had their SSBCI programs approved.

Texas

Western democracies are losing the race for scientific and research breakthroughs, and the ability to retain global talent, integral ingredients in developing technologies, according to a recent report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). In the project funded by the U.S.

The White House released the President’s Budget for FY 2024 today, and the administration is making a strong statement of support for science, technology, innovation and entrepreneurship.

A new fact sheet released today from the White House outlines three recent activities related to artificial intelligence.

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.

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.

A recent study published in the Journal of Higher Education reveals that a college graduate’s mix of funding sources may reflect when they were born and how likely they were to obtain a graduate degree.