Philadelphia now ranks as the 6th best life sciences market in the US

By the time the BIO International Convention returns to Philly in 2027, maybe we’ll be at #1.

Real estate services firm CBRE highlighted the region’s ongoing growth in the life sciences field with its 2023 Life Sciences Research Talent report, listing Philadelphia as #6 among the top 25 US markets. The region moved up two spots after ranking #8 on last year’s list. According to the report, Philly was among the markets that showed the most improvement in the top 25 rankings over the last year.

The ranking comes as Philadelphia continues to make strides in the field. Recent highlights includes more research spaces opening specifically to house life sciences companies, including Integral Molecular’s new office and lab at the One uCity building in University City. Life sciences also made up one fifth of venture capital funding last year, according to PACT’s 2022 venture capital report.

Read the report

For the report, CBRE looked at the 74 largest life sciences labor markets and considered criteria such as the number of life sciences researchers in each region, the number of recent graduates in related fields, and the total number of doctoral degree holders, as well as the concentration of jobs in life sciences-related fields.

Philadelphia landed between San Diego at #5 and Raleigh/Durham at #7. (Fellow Technical.ly markets Washington DC/Baltimore landed at #3 and Pittsburgh ranked #23.) Its high ranking is due partly to the concentration of life sciences talent in Center City and University City, but also, in the north and west suburbs surrounding the city, according to CBRE.

Philadelphia has one of the highest concentration of life sciences researchers in the United States, with 0.6% of its total labor force employed in the life sciences. The region has also saw 18% growth in life science researchers between 2017 and 2022.

Another boon for local talent: Life sciences workers in the Philadelphia region have some of the highest average wages, with biochemists making an average of $119,102, biomedical engineers making $102,716, biophysicists making $118,834 and chemists making $93,263. The annual cost of living in the region is $56,355 as of 2021.

“The market’s impressive performance is not surprising given the influx of new companies that over the past few years have been paired with the strong base of existing talent,” said Matthew Knowles, first VP at CBRE, in a statement. “We expect the region’s strength here to continue to grow, as the talent pipeline will be bolstered by the approximately 4,000 annual relevant degree completions and research being conducted at area universities.”

(Here’s more on local retention efforts for another high-earning STEM degree: computer science.)

The life sciences industry in general continues to grow, with the number of researchers increasing by 3.1% in 2022 compared to 2.2% overall job growth in the United States last year.

Philly also ranked fifth in JLL’s own life sciences cluster report in October.

Sarah Huffman is a 2022-2024 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism.