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FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, October 16, 2001
Commerce
Advance Estimate Shows Growth Rate of U.S. Corporate R&D Investment
Doubling from 1999 to 2000
Information
& Electronics Manufacture and Services Sector Drives Growth
Washington,
DC - Public corporations headquartered in the United States
almost doubled the growth rate of their investment in R&D in 2000 according
to new data from the Advance Estimate of Annual U.S. Corporate R&D report
released today by the Commerce Department's Office of Technology Policy.
According
to the report, R&D investment in 2000 rose sharply by 9.3 percent in inflation-adjusted
terms, increasing from $145.6 billion in 1999 to an estimated $162.7 billion
in 2000. The increase reverses a five-year trend of slowing annual percentage
increases in corporate R&D investment, and approaches the high of a 10.2
percent annual increase set in 1995.
"R&D investment
underlies much of industry's essential, creative process and can serve
as an important indicator of future technology change and potential economic
growth," said Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy Bruce Mehlman.
"Our advance estimate will help public and private decision-makers as
they plan their growth strategies."
Among the
report's highlights:
- U.S. corporate
R&D is increasingly concentrated in two major sectors, information and
electronics manufacture and services (I&E) and medical substances and
devices. In only six years, these sectors together moved from claiming
55 percent of all U.S. corporate R&D in 1994 to 67 percent in 2000.
- Conversely,
three major sectors lost significant share of total corporate R&D. Together
aerospace, chemical manufacture, and basic industries and materials
declined from a 21 percent share of R&D in 1994 to only 13 percent in
2000.
- The I&E
sector is the principal driver behind the 9.3 percent increase in corporate
R&D by virtue of the size of its R&D investment in 2000 (47.2 percent
of total U.S. corporate R&D investment) and the strength of its increase
(16.3 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars). Combined, the non-I&E
industries increased R&D by only 3.7 percent in 2000.
The advance
estimate, which is published under the U.S. Corporate R&D data series,
covers nine major sectors:
Aerospace
Basic Industries & Materials
Chemical Manufacture
Information & Electronics Manufacture and Services
Machinery Manufacture
Medical Substances & Devices
Surface Transport Equipment Manufacture
Unclassifiable and Conglomerates
Various Services
For the
first time, the report is based on the new North American Industry
Classification System (NAICS) rather than the decades-old Standard
Industrial Classification (SIC), and more accurately updates data
for the years 1994-2000.
The full
text of the U.S. Corporate R&D Advance Estimate report is available
from Office of Technology Policy website, www.ta.doc.gov/reports .
The Office of Technology Policy expects to issue the final report
on U.S. Corporate R&D in the spring of 2002.
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