More than 27 million people worldwide worked at U.S. companies in 2008 that fund or conduct research and development, according to new statistics from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Solid majorities of the 27.1 million employees in those companies worked in the U.S. (68%) or for manufacturing companies (60%).
In these companies, however, just under 2 million staff members — about 7% — did R&D work in 2008, the latest year for which NSF has data. Nonetheless, this R&D activity was valued at $346 billion, with more than $283 billion of that (82%) in the United States.
Likewise, of the nearly 2 million R&D staff at these companies worldwide, nearly 1.5 million or 76% worked in the U.S. About 1.1 million or 59% of all R&D staff worked for manufacturing companies, with one-quarter (26%) of those manufacturing employees in either pharmaceuticals or semiconductors.
Of the 780,000 R&D workers in non-manufacturing enterprises, more than one in four (210,000) are employed by software publishers. Another 21% worked for computer system design services, while 16% serve with scientific R&D services.
In its announcement of the report, NSF says the data are preliminary. A final report with more detailed data is planned for release in early 2011.
Photo: Anssi Koskinen/Flickr
RSS - Posts
you have a great page here, lots of good stuff about employment in usa.