Medical device makers have come through the U.S. economic recession relatively unscathed, but the early 2000s were marked with periods of regress that may be making a comeback, according to a new report.
Med-tech and equipment represented 1 in 5 workers in the bioscience industry with a total of more than 343,000 employed in 2010. Employment in the medical device and equipment industry declined less than half of 1% from 2001 to 2010, representing a loss of a fewer than 1,000 jobs over that period.
"This generally flat performance can be considered an achievement, since there is a strong push towards increasing productivity in medical device and equipment manufacturing, akin to other advanced manufacturing industries," the report states.
But the industry didn’t hold steady throughout that period – jobs data showed a series of ups and downs that were seemingly unrelated to usual business cycles, according to the Battelle/Bio State Bioscience Industry Development 2012 report.
The industry steadily lost jobs from 2001 to 2004, increased employment from 2005 to 2008 and entered another period of decline in 2009. The recent downward trend in jobs was shared with most other biosciences sectors, with the exception of research, testing & medical laboratories, which saw modest increases in employment between 2007 and 2010.
"The [medical device] subsector entered the recession with momentum – from 2005 through even the first year of the recession in 2008, the subsector steadily added jobs before decreasing by a modest 9,000 jobs, or 2.6 percent, over the 2008–2010 period," according to the report. "Looking out over the decade, medical devices has weathered relatively minor ups and downs in employment and ended 2010 essentially flat compared with 2001, down just 0.3 percent over the decade."
Med-tech saw a 0.8% slide in employment from 2007 to 2010, despite a 7.7% increase in the number of device makers.
Wages, however, grew by an impressive 14% from 2001 to 2010, trailing only the pharmaceutical sector’s 15% wage increase during that time. The average med-tech employee earned more than $72,000 in 2010.
