The Clinton campaign released on Tuesday, Hillary Clinton’s Initiative on Technology & Innovation, a wide-ranging platform with a heavy emphasis on technology-based economic development.

This week, the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) and the Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) announced that FY 2016 funds for the Partnerships for Opportunity and Workforce and Economic Revitalization (POWER) program are now available. Now in its second year, POWER is a multi-agency effort to invest federal economic and workforce development resources in communities and regions negatively impacted by changes in the coal economy.

More than 85 percent of the nation’s total income growth between 2009 and 2013 went to the top 1 percent of earners, according to a recently released report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Furthermore, the top 1 percent captured at least half of all income growth in 24 states between 2009 and 2013, and the entirety of income growth in 15 of those states during the same timeline.

With the U.S. facing an anticipated skills gap of two million manufacturing jobs by 2025, SME – a national manufacturing workforce development organization – launched the SME High School Membership program – a free online platform to “educate the next generation on the value of manufacturing and encourage careers in the field.” The new platform is the expansion of a pilot program that engaged more than 600 high school students via memberships, which included SME’s 16 PRIME (Partnership Response In Manufacturing Education) schools. Utilizing STEM Premier’s online platform, students can create a digital profile to showcase their skills and abilities; receive customized academic and career guidance; match up with $20 billion in scholarship opportunities; and, directly connect with colleges and companies looking to recruit.

The Employment Training Administration (ETA) released solicitations for a total of 12 ApprenticeshipUSA Single Industry Intermediary Contracts and ApprenticeshipUSA Multiple Industry Intermediary Contracts to become national ApprenticeshipUSA partners and have a leading role in the Sectors of Excellence in Apprenticeship (SEAs) in several key industries.

The angel investor market in 2015 had a slight increase in investment dollars and in the deal size according to a new report from the Center for Venture Research (CVR) at the University of New Hampshire.

The Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship held America Without Entrepreneurs: The Consequences of Dwindling Startup Activity last week. Citing the decades-long decline in new business creation as a motivating factor, senators’ remarks and questions identified regulation and student debt as contributing factors to this decline and to supporting basic research and immigration policy as potential solutions. The majority of the discussion focused on geographic disparities in innovation and how to better share the promise of economic prosperity going forward.

Massachusetts legislators are debating the future of Gov. Charlie Baker’s $918 million economic development proposal, including investments in local infrastructure, emerging technologies, community-based innovation, brownfields cleanup, Gateway Cities development and workforce development. The proposal would implement several of the action items from Baker’s economic strategic plan, issued last November, over the next five years.

Last week, JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPMC) announced the launch of PRO Neighborhoods, a $125 million, five-year initiative to promote economic opportunity in disadvantaged neighborhoods around the country. PRO Neighborhoods will invest in local collaborative partnerships and financial solutions, focusing on community lending, housing capital and high-quality data. Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) partnerships and collaborative efforts to provide capital to small businesses in distressed neighborhoods may be eligible for support.

On April 25, the Economic Development Administration (EDA) will begin accepting applications for the 2016 round of the Regional Innovation Strategies (RIS) program. A total of $15 million in federal funding will be available through the program’s i6 Challenge and Seed Fund Support Grant competition. EDA will hold a series of webinars next week leading up to the release of the Federal Funding Opportunity on April 25, 2016. Webinar times are available on EDA’s RIS page.

In nearly every state, employers use non-compete agreements with the justification that these contracts can help protect trade secrets and reduce the probability of worker exits. At the same time, however, non-competes may impose a large cost on workers, whose bargaining power and future employment opportunities are reduced by the contract. New research from the Office of Economic Policy at the U.S. Department of Treasury evaluates the impacts of non-compete agreements and suggests that reform is needed in order to craft policies that best benefit firms, workers, and society as a whole.

Maryland legislators recently approved a $42.3 billion fiscal year 2017 spending bill that incorporates many of the funding levels included in Gov. Larry Hogan’s proposal. Gov. Hogan made education a main focus of his proposal, and the final bill would hold university tuition increases to no more than 2 percent. In addition, legislators formalized the growing strategic partnership between University of Maryland campuses in Baltimore and College Park.

Alberta’s provincial government has announced a significant shift in its approach to economic development, moving from a program it had created just last fall to provide $5,000 for each new job created to a broader range of initiatives supporting business incubators, investor tax credits, and industrial diversification.

The National Science Foundation tells of a record number of doctorates awarded at the same time the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) reports opportunities to secure tenure-track positions continue to shrink, the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association points out state support for higher education remain

The Internet of Things (IoT) is all the rage within the information and telecommunications sector and has both applications and implications for every aspect of your life.

In the last month, major new developments have occurred in TBED capital programs. Launch Tennessee and Pittsburgh-based Innovation Works both announced positive findings about the growth of their startup investment ecosystems with $1 billion being raised by Tennessee startups from 2012 to early 2016 and over $279 million invested in Pittsburgh startups in 2015. Meanwhile in Ohio, both Youngstown-based and Cincy-based startups will see an influx of capital, while a new $150 million fund focused on stem cell companies and regions has been launched.

To build 21^st century workforces in key S&T sectors, several new public-private initiatives have been launched in South Carolina, New Jersey, Utah, and Montana. These initiatives are intended to better align the educational training of students with the needs of industries that each respective state has identified as a key industry cluster. Target industries include advanced manufacturing, aerospace, biotechnology, chemistry and plastics, and cyber security.

South Carolina

The Department of Labor (DOL) announced that it will commit up to $90 million for the newly established ApprenticeshipUSA initiative with the intent to double and diversify the number of apprenticeships by 2018. Through the ApprenticeshipUSA program, the DOL will coordinate efforts with industry and education leaders, nonprofits, and local governments to accelerate and expand state apprenticeship strategies and grow the use of apprenticeships in new industries.

The Economic Development Administration (EDA) released the Federal Funding Opportunity (FFO) and began accepting applications for the 2016 round of Regional Innovation Strategies (RIS) Program funding. In this round of funding, the EDA has made $15 million in federal funding available to create and expand cluster-focused proof-of-concept and commercialization programs and early stage seed capital funds through the i6 Challenge and the Seed Fund Support (SFS) Grant competition, respectively. Managed by EDA’s Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (OIE), EDA has made $13 million available for i6 Challenge grants and $2 million available for SFS grants. The deadline for the 2016 RIS FFO is 11:59 P.M. ET on June 24.

Only 8 percent of partners with the authority to invest at 2,300 micro- and venture capital (VC) firms are women (and only 7 percent of the top 100 firms), according to CrunchBase Women in Venture, a new report providing a detailed snapshot of the state of female investors and founders. The report finds of 54 corporate VC divisions and 101 accelerators, 12 percent of partners were female.

Last month, the Department of Energy (DOE) released its first United States Energy and Employment Report (USEER) in an effort to articulate in clearer terms the sector’s wide-ranging impact on the national economy. While this report covers the entirety of the energy spectrum, a related report released just weeks after, Clean Jobs America: A Comprehensive Analysis of Clean Jobs in America, looks only at those jobs related to the clean energy economy. Based on SSTI’s analysis, Clean Jobs America suggests that there are more than 2.5 million clean energy jobs in the United States, or 44 percent of the 5,729,882 energy jobs highlighted in the DOE report.

In its first passage of a broad energy bill since the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, the U.S. Senate included provisions in the Energy Policy Modernization Act of 2016 (S.2012) that would: increase the authorization level for the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science by 5 percent per year to $7.1 billion; increase the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) program’s authorization level to $375 million in 2020, up from $291 million this year; help remove barriers for technology transfer at the federal laboratories; and, authorize the DOE to establish “microlabs” in close proximity to federal labs in support of regional innovation. The bipartisan legislation was approved by a vote of 85 to 12.

On April 20, the Virginia General Assembly sent three economic development-focused bills (HB 1343, HB 846, and HB 834) to Gov. Terry McAuliffe. The bills include the creation of a new research fund and the creation of a network of regional economic development councils. Although the bills have yet to be signed, Gov. McAuliffe has publicly supported each of them. This package of economic development initiatives was originally proposed in the governor’s economic development strategy as well as his recent budget proposal. However, it took some compromise between the governor’s original proposals and the General Assembly to reach a final package.

Coming off a record setting year, industry analysts contended that there would be a more cautious U.S. venture capital industry (VC) in 2016 with discussion of a VC bubble. However, in Q1 of 2016, venture capitalists invested more than $10 billion for the ninth consecutive quarter with little concern over a bubble. In total, VCs invested $12.1 billion in 969 deals in the Q1 of 2016, according to the MoneyTree Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). At the same time, U.S. venture capital firms raised $12.0 billion for 57 funds during Q1 of 2016, making it the strongest quarter for funds raised since Q2 of 2006, according to the Fundraising Report by Thomson Reuters and NVCA. A review of the data indicates continuation of trends in where venture capital is being invested, the decline of investment in seed stage companies, and increasing corporate venture capital activity with 20.6 percent of funds invested in Q1 of 2016 coming from corporate venture capital.

As the 2015-2016 academic year comes to a close, universities and their industry partners have announced several new university-industry partnerships to leverage university research capabilities to address industry needs. Fortune 500 companies including IBM, Rolls-Royce, and several pharma companies have agreed to commit millions of dollars to support these partnerships targeted at increasing the pace of scientific discovery as well as training the next generation of STEM professionals.