Phoenix Invests Big In Health Care And Biosciences, Hoping To Boost Economy And Add Jobs

Press release from the City of Phoenix:

September 14, 2020

Community and Economic DevelopmentCED

The 850 North Fifth building by Wexford Science+Technology opens in November 2020. It's the first of four, possibly five new buidings on the Downtown-sited Phoenix Biomedical Campus. Show Caption Hide Caption Phoenix Invests Big in Health Care and Biosciences, Hoping to Boost Economy and Add Jobs September 14, 2020 7:20 AM

Claudia Whitehead turns from her computer screen and picks up her phone. The caller is the CEO of a Phoenix-based biosciences company calling to tell the program manager in the Phoenix Community and Economic Development Department that it landed $1 million in seed money to advance its contribution in the search to cure cancer. The company needs help in expanding its workforce.

To get the ball rolling, Whitehead will confer with a teammate at the Phoenix Business and Workforce Development Center, part of the city's Arizona@Work career program. A representative from GateWay Community College’s LabForce will be swept into that conversation. Within a matter of hours, work begins to set up a custom training program to help the company grow out of its incubator. It's just another service from city of Phoenix to the growing bioscience healthcare industry sector in the city.

"Bioscience healthcare has become one of our core industry sectors," said Whitehead. "When we started talking with Amanda Morris, bioscience reporter for The Arizona Republic, it became apparent that Phoenix is a major global center for life-changing bioscience achievements. The work being accomplished with precision medicine and cancer research is like something from science fiction. In Phoenix, we have the ecosystem in bioscience to take the future of medicine from discovery to delivery."

Amanda Morris, the bioscience reporter for the The Arizona Republic, pulls back the curtain and unveils how 7,000 new jobs in bioscience healthcare are to be dispersed around the growth in the sector.

Companies are investing billions in Phoenix's bioscience and health care industries, which is expected to bring 7,000 new jobs.

By Amanda Morris for The Arizona Republic

Phoenix recovered more slowly than the rest of the nation after the Great Recession, taking years to recoup lost jobs.

But this time around, the region might see faster recovery from the COVID-19 recession.

One big reason is the city’s changing economic landscape, which has begun to rely less on construction and focus increasingly on sectors like health care and bioscience.

Those industries are more resilient in the face of economic changes, said Christine Mackay, community and economic development director for the city of Phoenix. She said the city has seen significant growth in health care and bioscience over the past few years.

Read the full story in The Arizona Republic.

This press release was produced by the City of Phoenix. The views expressed here are the author’s own.