Biotech to spark jobs boom in Germany, says study

Biotechnology is expected to create thousands of new jobs in the pharmaceutical industry in Germany over the next 12 years, according to a study published by the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI).

The Fraunhofer ISI derived its figures for the number of employees working in biotech in Germany by taking the percentage of sales generated by biotech in 2004 and extrapolating the same percentage from the total number of employees in the pharmaceutical industry and related suppliers.

Based on the assumption that 11-18% of revenues in the pharmaceutical industry were created by biotechnology in 2004, it estimates that between 25,600 and 41,800 people were employed in the biotech sector in 2004.

This figure breaks down into 12,400 to 20,400 direct employees in pharmaceutical companies whether involved in research, production and marketing, while the number of people in supplier industries ranged from 13,100 to 21,500.

Based on industry assumptions that by 2020, the percentage of sales generated by biotech will be 18-40%, the Institute predicts that some 40,500 to 90,000 people will be working in pharma related biotech either directly or indirectly in 12 years' time. This figure also factors in annual growth rates in the pharmaceutical industry of 2-2.5%.

The total is made up of between 17,800 to 39,600 people directly employed in the pharmaceutical industry as well as some 22,700 to 50,500 suppliers.

Fraunhofer ISI project director Michael Nusser said Germany was in a strong position to play an important role as a location for biotechnology in the future despite international competition. 'The actual employment potentials of the biotechnology industry have been significantly underestimated,' he said.

Until now there had been a lack of complete employment figures, and the size of the employment effect had mostly been investigated for small biotechnology companies and their equipment suppliers, Nusser added.

The study evaluated the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and risks of Germany as a biotechnology location. Its remit extended to environmental biotechnology and the chemical industry as well as pharmaceuticals and offered a similarly optimistic view of their prospects.

The pharma results tally with figures from a Boston Consulting Group study published early last month, which found that biopharmaceutical products accounted for Euro 3.13bn or 12% of the entire pharmaceuticals market (€25.4bn) in Germany last year.