The previous edition of this report (released January 2020, as part of Indicators 2020) offered several broad conclusions about the status of the U.S. R&D system: (1) the annual total of U.S. R&D performance is back on a strong, sustained expansionary path (since 2010); (2) the United States remains the world’s top R&D performer and conducts much more basic research than other countries, although China is moving ever closer to the United States in the spending magnitude of its overall R&D effort; and (3) the U.S. and European shares of the global R&D total continue to erode as those of countries in East-Southeast and South Asia increase. The data presented in this report reinforce these findings.

Prior sections of this 2022 edition of the report provide a detailed update of relevant trends in each of these areas. One broad finding is that the expansionary trend of U.S. R&D performance, as measured by dollar expenditures, remains and appears to be gaining further steam, with larger year-over-year increases in the most recent years, along with a rise of the nation’s R&D-to-GDP ratio to above 3.0%. A second finding is that the United States remains the world’s top R&D-performing country as well as performing the most basic research. China remains a close competitor, but in the latest statistics (revised since our 2020 report), the gap is larger than previously reported. (In 2019, the United States spent $667 billion, and China accounted for $526 billion.) Nonetheless, the growth rate of China’s overall R&D enterprise continues to expand yearly, on average, at twice the rate of the United States. With China’s exceptional growth and the strong increases of other Asian countries, such as Japan, South Korea, India, and Taiwan, the global geography of R&D continues to shift to East-Southeast and South Asia.

In 2019, the business sector remained the predominant performer and funder of U.S. R&D. The sector’s ever-higher levels of performance have accounted for about 80% or more of the year-over-year increase of the U.S. R&D total since 2010. Nevertheless, the presence and consistency, year after year, of federal funding support for R&D performed by all sectors has been an essential force in the functioning of the U.S. R&D system. Even so, the data continue to show that the share of U.S. R&D performance funded by the federal government overall has been declining since 2010. This decline is, in part, a consequence of the large increases in R&D funding from the business sector in recent years. Nonetheless, it indicates that federal funding has not kept up with the increases in other sectors.