Life Sciences Growth Is Pushing Beyond the Usual Coastal Suspects

Growth in the US life sciences sector is spreading beyond those cities typically regarded as “flagship markets,” according to a new report from CBRE.

Nashville is leading the US in terms of percentage growth of life sciences jobs while Houston offers a high percentage of PhDs and an affordable quality of life, the analysis notes. CBRE data shows that job growth in life sciences professions ticked up by 79% since 2001 to hit 500,000 nationally. By way of comparison, the overall US job growth rate was just 8% during that same timeframe.  

The top ten markets were Boston/Cambridge; Washington D.C./Baltimore; San Francisco Bay Area; New York/New Jersey; San Diego; Raleigh-Durham; Los Angeles/Orange County; Philadelphia; Seattle; and Chicago. But the data also tells a more nuanced story outside the confines of the usual life sciences suspects:  the markets with the greatest percentage gains in life sciences research jobs from 2015 to 2020 were emerging hubs like Nashville, Dallas-Fort Worth, Salt Lake City, Atlanta and Miami.

“There is a conventional view of life sciences that emphasizes large lab markets such as Boston, the Bay Area and San Diego. With this new report, we take a broader view, analyzing life sciences workforces across the U.S. as well as the connection that talent has to how – and where – companies grow,” said Matt Gardner, CBRE Americas Life Sciences Leader. “It’s also important to keep in mind that the life sciences industry encompasses more than drug development in the lab. Major growth drivers for life sciences – even amid market headwinds – include personalized treatment, advanced materials and future foods.”

The markets with the largest gaps between average life sciences wages and cost of living were Houston, Raleigh-Durham, Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Philadelphia, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Nashville, Chicago, Austin, and Sacramento.

And as for talent acquisition, “not surprisingly, the preponderance of research talent exists along the East Coast, stretching from Boston/Cambridge to Raleigh-Durham, as well as the West Coast, anchored by the San Francisco Bay Area,” the report notes. “However, significant pockets of talent exist in Chicago, Denver/Boulder, Houston, Dallas/Ft. Worth and Minneapolis/St. Paul, among other major metros.”

Talent pools are also “emerging rapidly in cities like Salt Lake City, Nashville, Columbus, Albuquerque and Tucson, according to CBRE, while smaller markets, such as Worcester, MA, New Haven, CT, and Albany, NY, benefit from a large concentration of life sciences researchers and highly educated talent and also from their proximity to Boston/Cambridge and New York/New Jersey.

To arrive at its rankings, CBRE considered criteria including number of life sciences jobs and graduates, life sciences’ share of each market’s overall job and graduate pool, its number of doctorate degree holders in life sciences, and its concentration of jobs in the broader professional, scientific and technical services professions.