Washington Biotechnology
& Medical Technology Annual Report, 2006

Employment

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The biotechnology and medical device industry in the state of Washington is comprised of more than 220 privately or publicly owned companies, and twenty-two non-profit research organizations. Note that universities, including the University of Washington, Washington State University, Eastern Washington University, and other colleges, along with organization such as Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Swedish Medical Center and Veterans Administration Hospital are excluded from the following given the difficulty in separating biotechnology and device specific employment from organization/institution total employment.

At the close of 2005, total aggregated biotechnology and medical device industry employment in Washington exceeded 18,500 people, an increase of 5.5 percent from 2004. In 2005, the biotechnology sector had more than 10,800 employees -- a 5.7% increase from the prior year. And the state's medical device employment exceeded 7,600 -- a 5.0% increase from a year earlier. Using the common advanced technology multiplier (3:1) it is estimated that these sectors combined indirectly employ more than 55,500 people in the state of Washington.

Notable layoffs in 2005 included Cell Therapeutics which issued layoff notices to 77 employees; Corixa (aquired by GlaxoSmithKline) which layed off 70 employees; Plexus which closed in Bothell facility and layed off 160 employees; and Xcyte Therapies which after nine years and more than $150 million in financing, sold off its core technology, reduced its staff from 85 to 5 and will close its headquarters in 2006. Another larger layoff that occurred in 2004 was Philips Medical Systems which layed off 150 employees in Bothell and consolidated its ultrasound manufacturing work to facilities in Reedsville, PA, and Andover, MA.

Largest Biotechnology & Non-Profit Employers, In-state (1990-2005)

Biotechnology development requires well educated and trained people, and as the state's biotechnology and device industry matures it reqiures a more diverse employee base. It requires people who understand biology, including microbiology, molecular biology, virology, genetics, pathology, biochemical engineering, fermentation, informatics and more. It needs people with Ph.D.s, Masters, Bachelors and Associate degrees. Importantly, over the last decade, Washington's biotechnology and medical device companies, and non-profit research organizations hired almost 1,000 new employees per year and with improving financial markets, including the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in the non-profit sector, this trend will continue.

The following is average entry level salary data and percentage of science related hiring by degree level derived from the Washington Workforce Training Survey conducted by Info.Resource in collaboration with the Washington Biotechnology & Biomedical Association (WBBA) and the Workforce Development Council of Seattle-King County (Washington State Workforce Training Report, April 2006 497 kb pdf).

Average Entry Level Salary

• Salary AA Degree (n=9): $29,380
• Salary BS Degree (n=15): $43,200

Science Related Hiring by Degree (n=17)

• AA Degree: 3%
• BA/BS Degree: 41%
• MS Degree: 14%
• PhD/MD Degree: 42%

Additional information regarding salaries was provided by Applied HR Strategies. A research associate with a BS degree and eight years of experience annual salary is $65,000. A quality control specialist with an AA degree makes an average salary of $36,000 and with five years experience makes close to $60,000. An entry level manufacturing associate with an AA degree is paid an average $35,000. A manufacturing manage with a BS degree has an annual salary of nearly $59,000.

Non-profit Research Organizations

In addition, Washington's universities, colleges and health care institutions such as Swedish Hospital and Medical Center, and the Veterans Administration Hospital employ a significant number of scientists, technicians, and others in research and education not included in the report data, but also fundamental to the industry's development.

Washington State Non-Profit Research Organizations (Employment, 2005, In-state)

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Note: Data from Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Swedish Medical Center excluded given difficulty in separating biotechnology specific employment from organization's total employment.

Given that the industry is driven by access to cutting edge research at institutions such as the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington, and access to supporting financial and legal services, it is not surprising that more than 90 percent of the industry employment is concentrated in the greater Seattle metropolitan area.

Importantly, cities in Eastern Washington, such as Pullman, Spokane and the Tri-Cities area are home to an increasing number of companies, such as Cadwell Laboratories, Hollister Stier Laboratories, The Heart Institute of Spokane, GenPrime, and others. Advantages of Eastern Washington, including a supportive economic development community, availability of land, lower cost-of-living, proximity to Washington State University, Pacific Northwest National Laboratories and the Spokane Intercollegiate Research & Technology Institute. These advantages will result in increased biotechnology and medical device development, and economic benefits to the region.

The biotechnology and medical device industry in the Greater Seattle Metropolitan area will continue to build on its existing foundation, and new opportunities are developing as a result of the newly founded Allen Institute for Brain Science established in 2003 with $100 million and named for its founder Paul G. Allen. The inaugural project of the Institute is the Allen Brain Atlas (ABA) that provides high quality gene expression data at a cellular resolution through the publicly accessible ABA Application.

The Allen Brain Atlas will be the cornerstone of 21st century brain science with researchers around the world leveraging information from the Brain Atlas to gain insights into some of the most profound and challenging questions facing science in this century. The location of the Allen Institute in Seattle will undoubtedly attract leading researchers, investors and companies such as Brain Fingerprinting Laboratories which relocated in 2004 from Iowa to a Washington Technology Center laboratory at the University of Washington.

Additionally, the location of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest philanthropic foundation in the U.S. with an endowment of approximately $28.8 billion, has had since its founding in 1994 and will continue to have an enormous impact locally and globally. The Gates Foundation provides support in four primary areas: Global Health, Education, Northwest, and Global Libraries.

The mission of the Gates Foundation's Global Health program is to ensure that people in the developing world have the same chance for good health as people in the developed world and they are pursuing this goal through grants to organizations like Seattle's Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), and Seattle Biomedical Research Institute, both internationally renown organizations supporting improved healthcare in the developing world.

Conservatively, biotechnology and medical device companies in Washington State are projected to directly employ more than 25,000 people by 2010 with indirect employment exceeding 69,000.

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