Wisconsin’s biohealth industry had an estimated $22 billion direct economic impact in the state last year, according to BioForward Wisconsin’s latest report.
The Madison-based group recently published its “Wisconsin Biohealth Industry Landscape and Economic Impact Report,” detailing job growth in the sector and its contribution to the state economy. The release coincides with the Wisconsin Biohealth Summit, being held in Madison this week.
In addition to the direct economic impact, the report highlights $37.7 billion in total economic impact in the state, combining direct, indirect and induced sources.
The biohealth industry supports more than 141,000 jobs across the state from these broad impacts, and industry employers directly employed more than 58,000 people in 2023, according to the report. That direct employment figure has grown by 25% since 2018.
Report authors are touting the impact of workers in the industry, noting the value added per worker in biohealth was $270,000 in 2023 — well above the comparable figure for the overall state economy, which was $131,000 for the year.
Digital health is the largest subsector in the state’s biohealth industry, employing about 16,000 people last year. The report shows a 34% growth rate in this figure since 2018, and highlights the dominant role of Verona-based Epic Systems in this area. The company alone reportedly employed about 13,000 people last year.
Meanwhile, biomedical research and testing in Wisconsin has seen its employment grow 52% since 2018, reaching just over 13,000 jobs last year. Report authors point to “extremely strong gains” in medical laboratories, which have doubled their employment over this five-year period.
And though medical device and equipment manufacturers employ a similar number of people in Wisconsin — about 12,000 last year — this subsector posted a 1% decline since 2018. Job gains across surgical appliances and supplies as well as medical instruments and dental equipment were balanced by net losses in irradiation device manufacturing, dental labs and electromedical equipment, the report shows. The state’s job losses are contrasted by 6.9% job growth nationally.
Biohealth distribution firms have boosted employment by 15.3% to just under 11,000 since 2018, in line with the national growth rate for these businesses.
And pharmaceutical manufacturers — the state’s smallest biohealth subsector — had a 37.5% employment growth since 2018, reaching nearly 6,800 jobs last year. That’s double the percentage gain at the national level, 17.9%.
The biohealth industry tends to pay more than other industries, with the average wages of nearly $104,000 in 2023 exceeding the average for all Wisconsin industries, which was about $61,000 for the year.
Along with these and other figures showing the strength of the biohealth industry in Wisconsin, the report spotlights a number of expansions and other “major investments” being made by some of the state’s top biohealth companies. These include Promega, Accuray, SHINE Technologies, GE HealthCare, Invenra and others.
The report also includes geographic details for biohealth activities in the state, which are largely clustered in the greater Madison and Milwaukee metropolitan areas. It notes the Madison region is more than twice as concentrated in biohealth compared to the national average, calling the city a “national leader” in the biohealth industry. Total biohealth employment there was 28,711 last year.
Milwaukee’s biohealth industry, by comparison, is slightly more concentrated in the sector compared to the national average and has “outsized” representation of medical device manufacturing and biohealth distribution. Its biohealth employment reached 16,822 in 2023.
Green Bay, while having a much smaller biohealth footprint, has seen “double-digit job gains” in recent years and reached 1,860 jobs last year.
See more in the report.