Report: Strong job gains from the US Bioproducts Sector

STRONG BIOPRODUCTS SECTOR GROWTH NATIONWIDE LEADS TO EQUALLY STRONG JOB GAINS

The report–An Economic Impact Analysis of the U.S. Biobased Products Industry (2018)—was prepared for the USDA’s BioPreferred® Program. The report is the fourth volume in a series of reports tracking the impact of the biobased product industry on the U.S. economy. 

The biobased products industry includes the following seven major sectors of the U.S. economy: Agriculture and Forestry; Biorefining; Biobased Chemicals; Enzymes; Biobased Plastic Bottles and Packaging;  Forest Products; Textiles

Results showed the growing bioeconomy leads to higher revenues, more jobs, innovative partnerships, and key environmental benefits. Biobased products, a segment of the bioeconomy, contributed $459 billion to the U.S. economy in 2016, a 17% increase from 2014. The biobased products sector impacts every state in the nation and is not just confined to states where agriculture is the main industry. Strong bioproducts sector growth led to a total of 4.65 million jobs in 2016, an increase of more than 10% in two years. This includes the 1.68 million people directly employed within the industry, plus 2.98 million employed in jobs supported by the industry. 

While there is no database that tracks the “quantity of biobased products sold,” the USDA BioPreferred Program has identified about 20,000 biobased products. This list contains very few forest products or traditional textile fiber products because these products only recently were included in the program.

Therefore, the study estimated that the actual number of biobased products is dramatically higher than the number in the BioPreferred Program’s database. In terms of jobs created and value-added, the forest products segment alone more than doubles the estimates for the remainder of the biobased products sector. Thus, 40,000 would be a conservative estimate of the total number of existing biobased products.

Sufficient data are not available to estimate the total number of individual “units” of biobased products sold. However, the total value added from direct sales of biobased products was estimated to be in $127 billion 2014 and $148 billion in 2016, suggesting that both the sales of and number of biobased products is increasing.