America’s biopharmaceutical industry is the global leader in medical innovation, with more than 550 new medicines approved by the Food and Drug Administration since 2000. In 2015, PhRMA member companies invested $58.8 billion in research in development of new medicines and over half a trillion dollars since 2000. The biopharmaceutical pipeline has over 7,000 new medicines currently in development around the world.
The impact of the biopharmaceutical sector is evident not only in treatment savings but also in economic activity. The biopharmaceutical sector is one of the most R&D-intensive in the United States, with companies investing more than 12 times the amount of R&D per employee than all manufacturing industries overall. More than 854,000 people work in the biopharmaceutical industry in the United States, and the industry supports a total of nearly 4.4 million jobs across the economy, including jobs directly in biopharmaceutical companies, jobs with vendor companies in the broad biopharmaceutical supply chain, and jobs created by the economic activity of the biopharmaceutical industry workforce.