RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK -- Today more than ever, biotechnology and the life sciences offer new life for North Carolina's economy.
This is one of the few bright spots in an otherwise dark economic picture. While North Carolina's unemployment rate has hit a record level - 11.2 percent, the highest in 30 years - employment in the biotechnology sector actually increased by 1 percent last year.
That means 600 North Carolinians have jobs this year because of our long-term strategy to create a life-science industry for the state. That represents remarkable growth in the face of overall economic stagnation.
Some 57,000 North Carolinians work directly in the life sciences. Those jobs in turn create work for another 123,000 people. So biotech accounts for a total of 180,000 jobs and $45.8 billion in economic activity in our state.
North Carolina is fulfilling the promise that the Biotechnology Center made 25 years ago when it began working to grow a life-science industry for the state. This success is built on partnership and collaboration in research, technology transfer, worker training, small company support and recruitment.
Today and Tuesday, North Carolina's prominence in the global life-science industry will draw an audience to the 18th annual Council for Entrepreneurial Development's Biotech 2010 Conference at the Raleigh Convention Center. Leaders from industry giants Genentech and Eli Lilly, North Carolina's Quintiles and GlaxoSmithKline, and many more will talk about where we are - and the future of job creation in our state.
Participants in the Biotech conference will be looking to the enormous potential of biotechnology for North Carolina's future:
Developing renewable fuel for vehicles
Growing more nutritious food on less land with less impact - enough food to feed the world
Discovering safer and more effective medicines.
If we continue to strengthen this industry in North Carolina, we have the potential to create another 65,000 to 70,000 jobs in the next decade. With ripple effects, that means a nearly half-a-million people would derive their livelihood from the biosciences. And life-science jobs are good-paying jobs. The average salary for all these jobs - from manufacturing workers to senior scientists - is $69,000 a year.
Best of all, many of our new life-science jobs will likely tap into the state's traditional strength - agriculture. By applying the tools of biotechnology to this $70-billion industry, we can add another $30 billion in annual economic activity in the next decade. This allows families who have farmed for generations to not only stay on the farm, but also prosper.
Creating these high-paying, high-impact jobs will require us to keep building and nurturing the partnerships between the public and private sectors, between government and science, between industry and education.
We need to increase our efforts to match industry needs with university discoveries. We need to train the best workforce, with the help of K-12 educators, the UNC system, private colleges and universities and the N.C. Community College System.
We have established the unique NCBioImpact partnership, which offers hands-on facilities at N.C. State University and N.C. Central University, as well as the statewide reach of the community college system's NCBioNetwork. This partnership ensures that North Carolinians with many different backgrounds can land these high-paying jobs. And we need to increase the odds for small companies to succeed. We'll help small companies navigate a maze of obstacles from business plan to funding.
We've built a solid foundation in North Carolina. Thanks to the creative minds and committed leaders we have, the life sciences offer even greater promise for our state - and even more jobs for our people.
Norris Tolson is the CEO/president of the North Carolina Biotechnology Center.
